IRLF 


FRED  M.  DEW  ITT 

BOOKSELLKU 

1000   TKI.KORAPH    AVE. 

OAKI.ANIi.  dAL. 


STUDIES, 

LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL: 


BY 
RICHARD  MALCOLM  JOHNSTON. 


FIRST  SERIES. 


INDIANAPOLIS: 

THE  BOWEN-MERRILL  CO. 

1891. 


Copyright,  1891, 
BY 

RICHARD  MALCOLM  JOHNSTON. 


P: 

WM 

57 
1811 


PREFACE: 

This  volume  has  been  made  partly  out  of  selections  from  a 
series  of  Class  Lectures  at  the  Peabody  Institute,  in  Balti 
more,  and  partly  from  articles  contributed  to  several  Ameri 
can  Reviews  during  the  last  twenty  years.  Written  in  the 
intervals  of  business  engrossments,  they  lay  no  claim  to  very 
earnest  thoughtfulness,  but  are  merely  running  observations 
upon  several  subjects  of  literary  and  social  interest,  and  are 
submitted  to  the  public  with  whatever  degree  of  modesty  may 
be  regarded  consistent  with  such  submission  at  all. 

Baltimore y  September  i8gi. 


CONTENTS. 


THE   SCHOOLMASTER       .                        I 

THE     LEGAL  PROFESSION 31 

BELISARIUS                     .     •* 62 

GEORGE  ELIOT'S  MARRIED  PEOPLE          ....  106 

LOUISE,   BARONNE  DE  ST^EL-HOLSTEIN           .        .        .  130 

PRE-AMER1CAN   PHILOSOPHY         ......  143 

AMERICAN  PHILOSOPHY 163 

THE  DELICACY  OF  SHAKESPEARE       .     .  184 
SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS       .     .     .     .     .214 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER. 


PROFESSIONAL  men  are  generally  representa 
tive.  The  priest  and  the  magistrate,  born  and 
reared  among  the  people,  are  like  the  constituency 
which  has  elevated  and  which  sustains  them.  To 
this  rule  the  Schoolmaster  is  an  exception. 

Not  but  what  there  are  many — and  we  could 
wish  there  were  more,  who  truly  dignify  their 
calling,  grace  the  society  in  which  they  move,  and 
worthily  represent  its  love  of  knowledge,  as  the 
priest  does  its  love  of  virtue,  and  the  magistrate  its 
love  of  justice.  We  are  not  speaking  of  these, 
however,  but  of  the  general  class;  and  taking  them 
as  a  class,  it  were  indeed  a  pity  for  society  if  they 
did  represent  it.  Rather,  it  is  a  pity  for  society 
that  in  this  case,  as  in  many  others,  it  will  not  suf 
fer  itself  to  be  represented,  but  is  ever  taking  pains 
to  avert  such  an  odium.  Whenever  the  schoolroom 
has  a  new  accession  from  society,  the  latter  for  a 
while  regards  him  with  whatever  of  interest  there 
may  be  in  a  sort  of  kindly  regret.  Not  that  it  is 
going  to  cut  his  acquaintance;  but  that  it  foresees 
and  fore-ordains  that,  if  not  at  once,  at  some  not 


2  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

very  distant  day,  he  is  to  take  on  a  new  being,  dif 
ferent  from  its  own.  Dr.  Arnold  used  to  say  that  a 
man  could  not  teach  successfully  more  than  about 
fifteen  years.  This  seems  strange  upon  the  first  view ; 
but  it  seemed  to  him  to  be  allowing  full  time  for  a  man 
of  good  gifts  to  become  disqualified  for  the  very  busi 
ness  which  he  has  been  arduously  pursuing. 

Yet  the  Schoolmaster  is  no  more  independent  of 
society  than  other  men.  He  is  just  such  an  official 
as  society  desires  him  to  be,  and  as  it  requires  him 
to  be.  He  is  the  same  functionary  everywhere, 
being,  in  his  class  representation,  contemporary 
with  all  times,  dwelling  in  all  countries.  Freemas 
onry,  with  all  its  traditions  of  antiquity,  is  young, 
compared  with  the  Schoolmaster.  For,  Freemason 
ry  nobody  asserts  to  be  older  than  Solomon's  time; 
while  the  Schoolmaster,  such  as  we  are  considering, 
was  already  an  old  man  and  set  in  his  ways  before 
Solomon  was  born.  Primitive  society  made  him 
what  he  was,  and  its  posterity  has  kept  him  such 
ever  since.  In  this  ever-changing  world,  society 
has  always  seemed  to  desire  to  keep  something 
which  does  not  and  cannot  change ;  and  they  have 
it  by  their  own  creation  in  the  Schoolmaster.  He  is 
like  the  Wandering  Jew,  who,  though  ever  roaming 
up  and  down,  and  ever  weary  and  forlorn,  must  con 
tinue  to  be  the  same  old  fellow,  from  the  covering 
on  his  head  down  to  the  very  nails  in  his  shoes. 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  3 

It  is  too  subtle  a  matter  to  be  determined  why 
society  desires  in  such  a  case  to  have  itself  so  mis 
represented.  There  is  probably  no  man  living,  and 
no  man  once  living,  now  dead,  who  could  satisfact 
orily  explain  this  phenomenon.  It  is  to  be  regretted 
that  Solomon  did  not  leave  us  a  few  droppings  of 
his  wisdom  upon  the  subject.  As,  if  the  claim  of 
Lodge  be  good,  he  had  time  to  set  up  Freemasonry, 
one  would  think  that  he,  or  at  least  he  and  Hiram 
together,  might  have  founded  one  good  common 
school.  But,  so  far  as  we  know,  he  did  not  venture 
upon  even  an  opinion — at  least  any  written  opinion. 
He  may  have  alluded  cursorily  to  the  schools  of  his 
time  in  some  witching  moment  of  confidence,  and 
lamented  with  a  few  friends  the  uselessness  of  any 
attempts  at  the  reformation  of  such  a  specimen  of 
the  vanities  of  life.  But  he  put  nothing  upon  paper. 
Let  us  not  seek  to  solve  what  was  too  difficult  for 
Solomon,  and  without  considering  why  society  has 
made  the  Schoolmaster  what  he  is,  let  us  contemplate 
him  as  he  is,  and,  in  as  good  humor  as  possible, 
muse  upon  the  hopelessness  of  his  ever  changing, 
without  the  consent  of  society,  either  his  character 
or  his  ways.  Then  we  may  conclude  by  asking  for 
this  consent,  and  suggesting  that  if  it  is  ever  to  be 
granted,  it  is  high  time,  for  other  sakes  besides  soci 
ety's,  that  it  were  granted  now. 

When  we  consider  the  length  of  time  for  which 


4  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

our  youths  are  trusted  to  this  class  of  persons  for 
the  development  of  their  intellects,  and  very  often, 
especially  where  they  reside  with  their  teachers,  for 
the  formation  of  their  characters,  we  ought,  it  would 
seem,  to  conclude  that,  if  such  a  thing  were  possi 
ble,  they  should  be  at  least  up  to  the  level  of  ordi 
nary  intelligence,  honesty  and  gentility.  In  the 
matter  of  the  first  of  these  qualifications,  so  far  as 
concerns  one  of  the  sources  of  knowledge,  there  is 
no  occasion  for  great  complaint,  if  any  person 
should  be  inclined,  even  for  reasonable  cause,  to 
complain  at  all.  The  Schoolmaster  is  not  usually 
without  sufficient  acquaintance  with  books;  that  is, 
with  text-books,  in  the  ordinary  curricula  of  schools. 
He  knows  them,  and  he  knows  them  by  heart.  He 
can  tell  you  the  very  page,  the  very  number  of  the 
problem,  or  the  section.  If  he  have  the  gift  of  im 
parting;  and  (what  is  difficult  to  avoid)  if  he  do 
not  lose  that  gift  by  the  very  habit  of  using  it,  a  boy 
may  be  carried  successfully  through  these  text-books 
in  reasonable  time.  We  must,  therefore,  not  fall 
out  with  the  Schoolmaster  for  the  want  of  a  sufficient 
intelligence  of  books.  We  must  do  him  justice  as 
we  go  along,  and  the  more  especially  because,  get 
ting  his  bad  qualities  from  ourselves,  he  gets  this 
one  good  in  spite  of  ourselves.  Yes,  with  his  text 
books,  he  is  entirely  at  home.  Take  him  in  Arith 
metic.  He  is  perfect.  He  knows  from  units,  tens, 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  5 

thousands,  through  and  through,  past  the  Men  work 
ing  on  the  Wall,  past  the  Hare  and  the  Greyhound, 
past  the  Horseshoe,  and  down  to  the  very  last  page 
where  the  hunter  is  pointing  his  gun  with  unerring 
precision  at  the  squirrel  that  sits  so  perpendicularly 
on  the  tip-top  end  of  the  tip-top  leaf  of  the  tree. 
Take  him  in  grammar.  He  is  familiar  with  every 
thing  from  what  is  your  name?,  and  what  is  the 
name  of  the  State  in  which  you  live?,  to  those  re 
mote  regions  which  none  but  he  and  the  man  who 
made  the  bock  have  the  temerity  to  explore.  Take 
him  in  Geography.  He  has  it  all  from  the  Capital 
of  the  United  States,  down  to  the  most  nasal  or  the 
most  sneezy  of  names  borne  by  the  most  insignifi 
cant  and  squalid  of  Chinese  or  Russian  villages.  A 
mere  man  of  the  world  might  better  not  encounter 
him  on  Arithmetic,  Grammar  and  Geography.  He 
has  been  over  that  ground  so  many  thousands  of 
times  that  he  can  go  over  it  by  night  as  well  as  by 
day,  backwards  as  well  as  forwards,  walking  or 
running. 

But  we  are  to  remember  that  instruction,  to  be 
just  and  complete,  must  come  from  other  sources 
besides  books,  especially  text-books.  Let  us  see 
how  this  interesting  person  will  appear  now.  Not 
to  advantage,  we  fear.  After  some  years  of  travel 
on  this  beaten  track,  which,  though  not  large,  is 
endless  because  it  is  round,  he  is  apt  to  lose  his 


6  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

way,  or  move  in  gyrations  whenever  he  gets  upon 
another.  He  finds  it  to  be  thus  full  soon :  besides, 
he  meets  so  many  persons  who  obstruct  yet  further 
his  difficult  journeyings  by  smiles  or  stares,  that, 
being  a  modest,  not  to  say  a  sheepish  man,  he  gets 
himself  speedily  back  again  to  the  old  ring  where 
there  are  no  hindrances  to  walk  or  run.  In  process 
of  time  his  estrangement  from  society,  and  his  at 
tachment  to  his  faithful  ring  increase  to  such  a  de 
gree  that,  in  the  last  stages  of  dementation,  he  may 
be  found  sometimes,  even  upon  a  Saturday  morning, 
gathering  entertainment  from  reading  Mr.  Smith's 
English  Grammar.  Call  upon  him  on  such  a  morn 
ing.  Suppose  you  begin  a  conversation  on  History. 
He  thinks  you  mean  Mr.  Peter  Parley,  a  harmless 
man  in  his  way,  but  perhaps  somewhat  prone  (and 
this  is  why  our  friend  likes  him)  to  dwell  upon  such 
events  as  the  finding  of  a  kettle  at  a  place  where 
some  parties  had  camped  over  night,  or  a  couple  of 
Plymouth  gentlemen  passing  a  night  in  walking 
around  a  forest-tree,  embarrassed  by  apprehensions  ot 
being  devoured  by  the  wolves,  or  having  their  toes 
bitten  by  the  frost.  As  conversation  must  take  a 
diversion,  let  it  be  to  literature.  He  is  acquainted 
with  so  much  eloquence  and  poetry  as  he  finds  in 
School  Readers,  and  like  Omar,  he  believes  all  out 
side  of  this  Koran  to  be  either  irrelevant  or  merely 
superabundant.  Take  him  into  politics.  No,  do 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  7 

not  take  him  there.  We  have  all,  all  but  he,  in  one 
way  and  another,  had  enough  of  them;  and  they 
have  so  nearly  ruined  us  that  we  will  not  take  him 
into  them  at  all.  He  knows  who  is  President  of  the 
United  States,  perhaps  who  is  Vice  President.  He 
probably  knows  or  suspects  yet  further  that  there 
are  thousands  upon  thousands  of  other  persons  of 
various  complexions  who  desire,  and  who  hope  to 
be  Presidents  hereafter;  and  if  he  cannot  tell  who 
of  all  these  are  to  have  their  desires  and  hopes  ful 
filled,  no  more  can  we.  So  we  will  leave  him  alone 
in  politics,  and  remove  ourselves  to  another  point 
of  observation.  One  more  look.  There  he  is  with 
his  Arithmetic,  his  Grammar,  his  Geography,  his 
Parley  and  his  Reader.  How  thoughtfully  his  brow 
contracts  as  his  eye  falls  upon  the  first !  How  se 
renely  those  eyes  smile  upon  the  second!  How 
widely  they  dilate  over  the  third!  How  meaningly 
they  close  on  the  fourth!  How  they  brighten  into 
enthusiasm  on  the  fifth !  Ay,  these  are  his  treasures, 
his  loves,  his  household  gods.  They  are  all  he  has. 
They  are  all  we  desire  him  to  have.  They  are  all 
we  allow  him  to  have.  There,  that  will  do.  Leave 
him  among  them.  Keep,  and  caress,  and  adore 
them,  good  man.  You  are  free  from  molestation, 
because  you  are  not  in  the  way  of  envy. 

Let  us  consider  next  how  the  Schoolmaster  will 
exhibit  himself  in  the  matter  of  common  honesty. 


8  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

Being  a  mere  man,  it  would  seem  that  in  this  regard 
he  ought  to  come  to  the  average  of  men  in  other 
pursuits.  Possibly  he  should  rise  a  little  above 
that  average,  considering  that  he  is  a  sort  of  exem 
plar  in  morals,  and  considering  further  the  trifling 
sums  there  are  to  tempt  him.  If  we  would  consent, 
it  is  probable  that  the  Schoolmaster  might  grow  to 
be  an  uncommonly  honest  person.  But  as  we  will 
not  so  consent,  let  us  see  how  he  can  endure  an  in 
vestigation. 

First,  it  must  be  conceded  that  the  Schoolmaster 
must  live: — that  is,  he  has  the  right  to  live  —  if  he 
can.  It  is  a  somewhat  interesting  question  whether 
or  not  a  man  has  not  the  right  to  live  at  all  events 
until  his  time  come  to  die,  provided  he  become 
not  guilty  of  any  one  of  those  great  crimes  for 
which  death  comes  under  sentence  of  the  law.  It 
is  certain  at  least  that  the  Schoolmaster  has  his 
needs  like  other  men.  There  was  reason  in  Shy- 
lock's  interrogatories,  and  they  may  well  be  put  by 
the  Schoolmaster.  '  Hath  he  not  eyes?  hath  he  not 
hands,  organs,  dimensions,  senses,  affections,  pas 
sions,  fed  with  the  same  food,  hurt  with  the  same 
weapons,  subject  to  the  same  diseases,  healed  by 
the  same  means,  warmed  and  cooled  by  the  same 
winter  and  summer  as  a  Christian  is?'  Such  argu 
ments  are  difficult  to  refute.  We  repeat  that  the 
Schoolmaster  must  live,  and  that  he  will  live  —  if  he 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  9 

can.  If  he  have  made  up  his  mind  not  to  commit 
suicide  outright,  he  is  going  to  live  in  spite  of  all 
society's  attempts  to  kill  him.  Not  that  society 
wishes  to  kill:  far  from  it.  On  the  contrary,  it  de 
sires  to  keep  him  for  many  purposes;  possibly  one 
being  to  have  a  constant  reminder  of  how  far  econ 
omy  may  be  carried,  and  upon  how  little  an  adult 
person  may  learn  to  subsist  and  yet  look  respect 
able.  But  the  difficulty  here  is  that  he  believes  so 
ciety  does  wish  to  kill  him;  and  consequently,  still 
like  Shylock,  he  is  disposed  to  take  'his  sufferance 
by  Christian  example.' 

Now  there  is  no  business  upon  earth,  except  prob 
ably  that  of  a  plumber,  wherein  it  is  so  easy  to 
cheat  upon  a  small  scale  as  that  of  keeping  a  school 
—  especially  a  boarding  school.  That  one  word 
Incidentals,  for  instance.  Oh  how  many  little  pick 
ings,  and  artful  dodgings  and  inexplicable  items  are 
included  in  that  one  word!  Broken  windows, 
scratched  desks,  fuel,  brooms,  putty,  paint,  brushes, 
chalk,  nails,  andirons,  bricks,  shovels,  brickbats, 
tongs,  scrub-brushes,  holes  —  holes  in  the  floor,  holes 
in  the  benches,  holes  all  over  the  house,  more  bricks, 
more  putty,  more  brick-bats,  more  holes!  Then 
there  is  stationery.  Perhaps  it  is  best  not  to  enter 
upon  the  subject  of  stationery.  It  is  so  extensive, 
so  ramified,  so  mysterious,  so  complicated  with  other 
matters,  and  it  so  complicates  the  Schoolmaster 


10  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

with  other  persons,  that  one  might  get  lost  in  the 
wanderings  of  this  labyrinth.  There  is,  however, 
no  danger  of  such  a  fate  to  the  Schoolmaster.  He 
understands  the  innumerable  meshes  of  this  attenu 
ated  net-work  of  charges  and  profits  as  thoroughly 
as  a  spider  can  traverse,  without  adhesion  or  en 
tanglement,  the  web  that  hangs  invisible  to  the 
world  of  winged  insects.  It  is  amazing  to  all  but 
him  what  a  multitude  of  books  a  boy  may  find  it 
necessary  to  purchase  in  a  comparatively  brief 
period.  Three  or  four  studies,  pursued  at  the  same 
time,  were  quite  sufficient,  one  would  suppose,  for 
a  pupil,  even  one  of  the  highest  capacity.  They  are 
too  many  for  an  ordinary  man.  But  your  school 
boy  will  have  his  six,  and  his  seven,  and  his  eight, 
and  sometimes  his  nine.  Why  bless  you,  he  will 
have  within  the  space  of  a  year  three  or  four  differ 
ent  books  for  every  one  of  these  studies.  There 
will  be  his  Primary,  his  Common  School,  his  First 
Course,  his  Second  Course,  his  Third  Course.  Dis 
coveries  will  be  constantly  made  that  these  books 
are  not  as  good  as  they  might  be,  and  new  ones  will 
be  brought  in.  Or  new  editions  of  old  ones  are  is 
sued  with  changes  appertaining  mostly  to  the  paging. 
We,  the  parents  of  such  boys,  are  so  easily  per 
suaded  that  their  powers  are  prodigious,  and  the 
velocity  of  their  development  immeasurable,  that 
we  think  it  economy  to  purchase  (from  the  school- 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  II 

master  or  his  friend)  every  year  for  our  boys  of  four 
teen,  as  many  books  as  are  got  by  an  Oxford  or  a  Hei 
delberg  student  throughout  his  whole  University 
course.  The  profits  on  these  books,  being  from  twenty 
to  forty  per  cent.,  a  man  who  is  determined  to  make  a 
living  can  lay  up  something  which  will  buy  bread  and 
butter  for  a  much  longer  period  than  most  persons 
suppose.  It  is  surprising  to  what  an  aggregate  petty 
contributions  will  amount  in  the  lapse  of  time.  The 
rat,  for  instance,  is  but  a  small  beast;  but  being  an  in 
dustrious,  and  withal  determined  to  live  as  long  and  as 
comfortably  as  possible,  we  all  know  what  an  ac 
cumulation  of  things  of  all  sorts  he  can  store  away 
in  his  hole  by  his  everlasting  thefts,  day  and  night, 
of  the  small  odds  and  ends.  The  scamp  will  build 
his  house  in  your  house,  make  his  bed  from  the  cot 
ton  and  hair  taken  from  your  bed,  one  thread  at  a 
time,  and  in  spite  of  your  traps  and  dead-falls,  arse 
nic,  terriers  and  cats,  will  make  you  furnish  him,  not 
only  with  bread  and  meat,  but  with  sugar  and  cake, 
and  all  the  other  luxuries  and  delicacies  that  you 
purchase  for  yourself. 

But  incidentals  and  stationery  are  not  the  School 
master's  only,  or  his  greatest  speculations.  Nobody 
knows  better  than  he,  the  art  both  of  saving  his 
labor  and  of  spreading  it  over  a  wide  surface.  So 
ciety  has,  somehow,  obtained  the  notion  that  he  does 
not  care  much  about  the  amount  of  work  he  has  to 


12  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

do, —  at  least  during  the  time  that  he  is  actually  en 
gaged  in  it.  In  this,  society  is  simply  mistaken. 
The  Schoolmaster  has  this  weakness  in  common 
with  society.  He  not  only  does  not  love  his  work, 
but,  like  all  reasonable  men  who  properly  understand 
the  original  curse,  he  hates  it.  And  now,  this  per 
son  knows  how  to  dodge  his  work  at  least  as  well  as 
any  other  person,  whatever  be  his  occupation  or 
complexion.  The  way  in  which  this  art  is  practised, 
makes  it  appear  to  be  not  only  the  acme  of  ingenu 
ity,  but  —  if  we  might  be  allowed  the  term  —  of 
paradoxicality.  The  hard  work  in  the  keeping  of  a 
school  is  mainly  expended  in  the  efforts  to  make 
every  pupil  perform  his  own  work.  This  is  the 
Schoolmaster's  chiefest  and  most  arduous  task.  To 
go  along  by  the  side  of  every  one,  the  gifted  and 
the  dullard,  the  active  and  the  crippled,  to  lay  off 
the  tasks  of  all  according  to  their  several  capabili 
ties  and  aptitudes,  and  to  see  that  the  main  work  in 
every  task  is  done  by  him  to  whom  it  has  been  as 
signed.  Yet,  these  tasks  are  usually  so  small  on 
account  of  the  levity  and  indocility  of  boys,  and 
they  appear  so  much  smaller  to  the  Schoolmaster 
who  has  been  over  them  his  thousands  of  times,  and 
then  he  so  well  knows  the  credulity  of  parents,  their 
pride  and  their  impatience,  that  he  will  take  upon 
himself  the  labor  which  the  majority  of  boys  will 
not,  without  compulsion,  themselves  perform.  While 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  13 

there  are  few  things  that  require  more  labor  than  to 
keep  a  school  and  see  that  all  the  pupils  accomplish 
their  own  proper  tasks,  there  is  nothing  that  requires 
so  little  as  to  keep  a  school  and  perform  those  tasks 
one's  self. 

It  is  a  matter  of  wonder  why  so  many  boys  of 
good  talents,  the  sons  of  men  of  talents,  after  hav 
ing  spent  five  or  six  years  at  school,  in  which  time 
they  have  been  accustomed  to  bring  away,  periodi 
cally,  flattering  reports  of  progress,  have  been  found 
at  sixteen  years  of  age,  upon  a  close  and  first  in 
vestigation  by  their  parents  to  be  disgracefully  igno 
rant.  Such  a  result  is  owing  to  this  more  than  to 
any  other  reason,  that  in  all  this  time  the  labor 
which  should  have  been  done  by  them  has  been  done 
by  their  masters.  None  know  so  well  as  the  School 
master  the  amount  of  indolence  and  stupidity  there 
is  in  youth,  especially  in  boys.  None  know  so  well 
as  he  the  temptations  to  conceal  these  infirmities, 
not  only  from  the  eyes  of  their  parents,  but  from 
his  own.  It  requires  a  man  to  be  in  daily  fear  of 
the  very  Devil  to  avoid  answering  himself  the  ques 
tions  which  he  has  propounded  so  often  that  it  would 
seem  that  a  fool  or  even  a  parrot  might  know  them, 
and  consoling  himself  with  the  delusion  that  after  one 
moment  longer  they  would  have  been  answered  by 
those  to  whom  they  were  put.  Thus  it  is  that  after 
years  of  flattery  and  fraud,  and  when  the  darkening 


14  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

down  upon  the  lip  warns  that  manhood  is  coming 
on  apace,  parents  find  that  their  credulity  has  been 
betrayed  and  their  money  expended  in  the  acquisi 
tion  of  the  faculty  to  go  through  the  vain  round  of 
answering  leading  questions.  If  one  of  these  par 
ents  be  a  man  who  is  addicted  to  cursing,  he  will 
curse.  But  cursing,  at  best,  gives  only  momentary 
relief,  and  is  a  most  inadequate  compensation  for 
wounded  pride  and  disappointed  hopes.  Besides, 
even  if  curses  condone  for  the  past,  they  surely  can 
avail  nothing  for  the  future.  After  cursing  his  curse, 
therefore,  he  can  only  look  out  for  another  school 
master,  and  find  possibly  that  he  has  jumped  from 
the  frying-pan  into  the  fire,  where,  in  good  time, 
all  the  pride  and  all  the  hopes  get  well  con 
sumed. 

Such  trials  befall  especially  the  rich.  One  might 
suppose  that  this  individual  would  endeavor  to  im 
prove  the  sons  of  the  rich  as  faithfully  at  least  as  the 
sons  of  the  poor.  That  is  another  mistake.  He 
will  not  do  except  upon  compulsion  of  considerations 
just  named  the  work  of  the  poor  man's  son.  He  is 
not  the  man  to  waste  his  time,  and  his  hardest  en 
deavors  upon  mere  cumberers.  They  must  perform 
their  own  tasks;  and  if  they  can  be  fed  and  clothed 
the  while,  they  will  obtain  all  the  knowledge  they 
seek  at  the  school  and  which  the  master  is  com 
petent  to  impart;  while  the  sons  of  the  rich  must 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  15 

carry  this  addition  to  the  burthens  which  riches  im 
pose, — that  of  being  cheated,  both  out  of  money 
and  out  of  education,  by  as  simple,  and  as  inno 
cent-looking  a  person  as  a  Schoolmaster.  Who  has 
not  observed  how,  in  most  of  the  schools,  the  sons 
of  the  poor  stand  or  deserve  to  stand  at  the  heads 
of  classes?  There  are  more  reasons  for  this  than 
society  knows.  The  chiefest  is  —  they  have  little  ot 
which  to  be  cheated. 

Let  us  take  another  point  of  observation  of  the 
Schoolmaster,  and  consider  how  he  ranks  in  the  scale 
of  respectability. 

One  of  the  highest  felicities  in  personal  deport 
ment  is  to  be  able  to  avoid  the  exhibition  of  those 
peculiarities  with  which  all  professions  are  apt  to 
signalize  their  followers.  It  is  a  detraction  from  any 
man's  claim  to  our  admiration,  if  in  his  conversation 
we  can  easily  determine  the  nature  of  his  occupa 
tion.  A  thorough  breeding  tends  to  remove  all  such 
indications,  and  there  is  a  charm  in  the  very  effort 
to  guess  what  may  be  the  manner  of  living  which  is 
led  by  a  perfectly  well-bred  man  who  is  a  stranger 
to  us.  How  can  the  Schoolmaster  stand  this  test? 
Less  satisfactorily  we  fear  than  those  of  intelligence 
and  honesty.  Of  all  men  he  is  the  most  distinguish 
able.  All  generations  have  not  been  able  to  efface 
the  marks  that  are  upon  the  class;  and  we  recog 
nize  him  in  whatever  places  and  at  whatever  dis- 


1 6  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

tances  we  observe  him ;  whether  he  be  in  the  crowd 
ed  street,  on  the  highway,  in  the  shop,  in  the  salon, 
or  in  the  woods.  There  is  a  combination  of  bold 
ness  and  sheepishness,  of  pluck  and  timidity,  of 
imperiousness  and  servility,  of  conceit  and  humility, 
which,  in  slightly  varying  relative  quantities,  distin 
guishes  the  individual  of  the  kind  I  am  trying  to 
describe,  everywhere,  north  and  south,  east  and 
west.  Even  the  varying  fashions  in  the  matter 
of  dress,  make  no  difference  in  him.  If  you 
look  into  his  hat  of  the  very  latest  style,  you  will 
see  what  he  is  by  the  very  way  of  his  writing  his 
name  in  it.  Yes,  we  know  him  by  his  hat,  and 
even  by  his  umbrella — whenever  he  has  one. 

A  character  made  up  of  so  many  different  ele 
ments,  can  scarcely  be  interesting  except  solely  up 
on  the  sportive  side  of  social  life.  Since  we  do  not 
wish  to  be  always  laughing, we  avoid  such  a  School 
master  on  all  occasions  of  our  serious,  which,  with 
us  all,  are  and  of  right  ought  to  be,  our  most  fre 
quent  moods.  It  must  happen  rather  seldom  in  our 
visiting  and  being  visited  that  we  like  to  be  with  a 
man  whose  memory,  while  he  is  in  our  presence, 
seems  to  be  away  back  in  the  school-room,  or  en 
deavoring  to  find  its  way  there,  and  who  seems  to 
be  in  a  state  of  most  vague  uncertainty  as  to  wheth 
er  or  not  he  ought  to  repeat  upon  us  the  despotism 
that  he  is  accustomed  to  employ  in  the  school-room, 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  I  ^ 

or  to  receive  at  our  hands  his  long-expected  retri 
bution.  Or,  if  he  be  neither  given  to  great  pugnac 
ity  nor  unusually  apprehensive  of  personal  chastise 
ment,  we  can  at  least  find  higher  entertainment  than 
in  being  very  often  in  the  society  of  a  man  who  is  all 
the  time  carrying  on  an  'examination'  by  trying  to 
teach  us,  or  be  taught  by  us,  throughout  the  whole 
range  of  the  science  of  platitudes. 

We  would  not  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  School 
master  is  not  a  person  who  has  a  notion  of  the  value 
of  being  polite.  Of  all  men,  his  notions  upon  this 
subject  are  extreme.  He  is  never  more  serious  or 
consequential  than  when  he  is  giving  lessons  in  man 
ners,  which  he  does  with  the  same  rigor  and  form 
ality  that  he  employs  in  teaching  Arithmetic  or 
Algebra.  But  the  difficulty  in  this  regard  is,  that, 
being  so  entirely  supreme  in  the  school-room,  being 
obeyed  and  bowed  to  so  everlastingly  there,  when 
he  comes  out  of  that  sphere  and  into  society,  he 
seems  at  a  loss  to  understand  where  the  bowing 
ought  to  be  and  who  is  to  do  it.  Apparently,  he 
remembers  that  he  is  not  in  the  schoolroom ;  but  he 
has  confused  notions  of  wherever  else  he  is.  At 
one  and  the  same  moment  his  physical  deportment 
is  partly  that  of  a  man  who  is  bowing,  and  partly 
that  of  a  man  who  is  being  bowed  to.  At  one  instant, 
we  see  the  frown  with  which  he  awes  and  warns  his 
subjects,  and  at  the  next  that  frown  is  gone,  and 


1 8  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

seeming  to  feel  that  he  has  lost  his  crown  and  his 
throne,  and  been  taken  captive,  he  must  needs  fawn 
and  cajole,  and  make  the  best  terms  possible  with 
defeat  and  captivity.  In  these  circumstances,  such 
a  man  never  knows  how  long  he  ought  to  remain  in 
our  presence.  He  usually  looks  as  if  he  preferred 
to  go  home,  and  that  he  would  go  home  if  he  were 
sure  of  being  able  to  find  his  hat.  But  he  appar 
ently  has  a  notion  that  somebody  may  have  hidden 
it,  and  that  he  had  better  wait  until  the  joke  is  over, 
and  it  is  returned.  So  he  lingers  and  lingers,  until 
when  he  at  last  makes  a  start,  he  takes  abrupt  leave 
and  rushes  off  with  surprising  velocity.  One  might 
suppose  this  was  because  he  is  afraid  of  the  dogs. 
That  is  another  mistake.  He  is  not  more  afraid  of 
dogs  than  other  men.  It  is  only  his  way. 

There  is  no  pursuit  which,  from  long  persistence 
in  the  way  in  which  it  is  often  practised,  so  dis 
qualifies  a  man  for  good  society  as  that  of  keeping 
a  school.  Recurring  to  the  remark  of  Dr.  Arnold, 
that  a  man  could  not  teach  successfully  more  than 
about  fifteen  years,  we  must  make  this  one  as  its 
corollary: — according  to  the  system  of  keeping 
schools,  man ywheres  in  vogue — a  system  which  soci 
ety,  for  the  most  incomprehensible  reasons,  will  not 
consent  to  have  changed  —  if  we  turn  the  School 
master  out  of  his  business  after  that  period,  there  is 
no  place  for  him  in  human  society.  The  domination 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  19 

which  for  so  long  time  he  has  been  practising  in 
the  school-room,  the  domination  which  he  has  been 
experiencing  in  the  same  time  from  the  outer  world, 
have  created  a  duplicity  of  being,  the  parts  of  which, 
though  the  most  repugnant  to  each  other,  are  so 
doubled,  and  twisted,  and  plaited  among  themselves 
that  they  become  ever  afterwards  indissoluble  by 
any  sort  of  experience  or  discipline.  He  becomes 
as  double  as  Eng  and  Chang,  and  as  indivisible.  If 
economy  and  the  public  morals  did  not  forbid,  he 
ought,  in  justice  to  his  amphibious  nature,  to  be 
allowed,  like  Eng  and  Chang,  two  suits  of  clothes, 
two  hats,  two  pairs  of  shoes,  two  chairs  to  sit  in, 
and  two  wives  to  live  with.  But  as  both  economy 
and  the  public  morals  forbid  these,  he  must  stick  to 
his  profession,  and  consequently  must  blunder  about 
more  and  ever  more,  with  his  eyes  crossed,  doubling 
all  objects  of  his  desire  or  attention,  and  missing 
them  in  his  search  by  going,  sometimes  to  the  right, 
sometimes  to  the  left,  or  more  frequently  still,  all 
around  them.  For  this  habit  of  mind,  acquired  in 
the  routine  of  his  daily  life,  makes  him  move  in 
circles,  which,  though  small,  would  be  as  round  as 
the  moon,  but  that  those  objects  not  being  them 
selves  always  stationary,  his  motions,  like  those  of 
the  moon,  are  epicycloidal,  and  as  infinite  as  are  his 
wants.  What  use  has  such  a  man  for  society,  or 
society  for  such  a  man?  From  the  very  character 


20  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

of  his  living  with  his  pupils,  he  becomes  unfitted  for 
living  with  anybody.  If  in  the  beginning  he  had 
any  acquaintance  with  the  temper  and  the  disposi 
tion,  and  the  general  character  of  youth,  he  comes 
at  last  to  lose  even  that.  His  experience  having 
been  made  up  of  tyranny  and  espionage  on  the  one 
hand,  and  trickery  and  falsehood  on  the  other,  him 
self  never  having  been  the  recipient  of  either  love 
or  fidelity,  he  comes  at  last  to  the  point  of  failing 
to  recognize  these  precious  things  whenever  he  sees 
them  in  society;  and  if  he  could  recognize  them, 
he  would  fail  to  appreciate  them  at  their  just  value, 
because  of  such  recognition  coming  too  late.  No. 
\7c  had  better  let  him  stay  thenceforth  in  the  school- 
house.  By  this  time,  he  is  unendurable  elsewhere, 
and  by  this  time,  or  very  soon  thereafter,  his  des 
potism  has  relaxed,  and  though  perhaps  not  yet  old 
in  years,  he  has  subsided  into  the  fondness  and  the 
twattle  of  dotage,  and  will  thenceforth  make  less 
harm  and  less  trouble  within  that  old  and  small  cir 
cumference  than  outside  of  it. 

Here  then  is  society's  favorite  Schoolmaster,  with 
his  little  satchel  of  text-books,  his  little  supple 
mental  bill  of  Incidentals  and  Stationery,  and  his 
eternal  dodgings,  and  blunderings,  and  rotations. 

And  now,  let  us  reason  a  little  with  society.  Let 
us  inquire  what  is  its  purpose  in  this  creation.  Does 
it  prefer  to  be  cheated  of  its  money  rather  than  to 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  2 1 

pay  it  out  for  a  valuable  consideration?  Is  there 
any  special  purpose  wherefore  it  chooses  to  remove 
its  youth,  during  the  most  critical  years  of  their 
being,  from  beneath  its  own  control,  and  place  them 
under  the  absolute  domination  of  a  man  who  is  so 
far  inferior  to  even  a  reasonable  standard  of  man 
hood?  If  society  will  consider  a  very  little,  it  will 
agree  with  us  that  a  boy  whose  father  is  a  gentle 
man,  and  whose  mother  is  a  gentlewoman,  has  been, 
up  to  the  time  of  his  leaving  home,  the  recipient  of 
great,  even  of  unspeakable  blessings.  It  might  ad 
mit  further,  that  when  the  necessity  arrives  for  leav 
ing  home  (and  an  unfortunate  necessity  that  is)  to 
receive  instruction  in  such  things  as  his  parents 
have  not  the  ability  or  the  leisure  to  teach,  it  would 
seem  to  be  desirable  that  he  should  be  transferred, 
if  possible,  to  a  family  the  heads  of  which  were  as 
much  a  gentleman  and  a  gentlewoman  as  the  parents 
whom  he  must  leave.  No  one  ought  to  deny  that  when 
the  discipline  at  home  has  been  such  as  a  gentle 
man's  son  should  receive,  that  discipline  ought  to 
be  changed  as  little  as  possible  in  the  place  to  which 
he  has  been  transferred.  That,  in  these  forming 
years,  his  young  eyes  should  still  behold  the  same 
fair  sights  of  integrity,  and  courage,  and  dignity,  and 
courteousness  in  the  man,  and  of  purity,  and  gentle 
ness  and  grace  in  the  woman  who  are  to  stand  related 
to  him  as  the  parents  whom  he  has  left  under  the  roof 


22  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

tree  at  home.  In  fine,  that  it  is  most  desirable  that 
such  a  boy  should  not  be  made  to  lose  all  the  good 
impressions  which  have  been  made  upon  his  young 
and  docile  mind  by  constant  indoctrination  inspired 
by  natural  affection  and  the  consciousness  of  ac 
countability  to  God. 

All  this  society  would  admit;  though  perchance 
there  are  some  who  might  contend  (for  reasons 
which  Heaven  alone  knows)  that  such  a  boy  ought 
to  find  at  a  boarding-school  as  few  things  as  possible 
to  remind  him  of  his  home.  Indeed,  judging  from 
what  may  be  observed  in  the  opinions  that  generally 
obtain  concerning  schools  and  schoolmasters,  most 
men  seem  to  desire  that  the  whole  training  around 
the  native  hearthstone  should  be  dispensed  with,  at  the 
boarding  school  and  especially  that  all  which  made  the 
boy  rejoice  in  the  consciousness  of  being  loved,  and 
trusted,  and  honored,  must  be  removed  out  of  his  reach 
and  out  of  his  sight,  and  that  hostility  must  now  begin 
between  him  and  the  very  man  who  has  been  selected 
by  his  father  to  perform  his  own  unfinished  work  in 
preparing  his  son  for  the  destinies  of  his  existence. 
Let  us  select  out  of  society  one  of  its  members, 
and  let  him  be  a  good  man  and  a  just,  but  neverthe 
less  one  who  has  such  ideas  as  we  have  been  de 
scribing.  How  do  we  usually  approach  the  man  in 
whose  family  we  propose  to  place  our  sons?  It  is 
in  a  style  which  shows  that  we  do  not  regard  him  as 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  23 

entitled  to  the  same  consideration  at  our  hands 
which  we  would  expect  and  exact  from  him  upon 
his  application  to  us  for  a  service  in  the  line  of  our 
occupation:  in  other  words,  that  we  do  not  regard 
him  as  a  gentleman.  And  this  proves  that  we  do 
not  feel  a  solicitude  that  he  should  be  such.  We 
sometimes  dispense  with  the  formality  which  is  al 
ways  recognized  as  a  most  becoming  one  in  the 
intercourse  of  gentlemen,  that  of  an  introduction  by 
a  common  acquaintance,  even  when  it  is  entirely 
convenient  to  obtain  it.  By  this  conduct  we  seem 
to  forget  that  we  inflict  what,  if  he  were  a  gentle 
man,  he  would  consider  an  insult  upon  his  feelings, 
in  the  assurance  we  thus  give  that  so  far  from  the 
possibility  of  his  rejecting  our  application  to  receive 
our  sons,  he  must  necessarily  be  delighted  by  the 
compliment.  And  when  we  have  approached  him, 
the  inquiries  we  propound  regarding  his  terms,  al 
though  we  have  seen  them  advertised,  our  disposi 
tion  to  make  our  own  inspection  of  the  way  in  which 
the  affairs  of  his  household  are  ordered  by  his  wife, 
show  that  we  do  not  consider  him  a  gentleman  to 
allow  such  things.  But  the  worst  of  all  our  treat 
ment  is,  that  we  show  that  we  desire  him  to  be  any 
thing  else  than  a  gentleman  in  the  government  cf 
our  sons,  by  subjecting  them  to  restraints  which  we 
never  threw  around  them,  not  so  much  because  such 
restraints  were  troublesome,  as  because  they  were 


24  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

odious.  At  our  own  houses,  we  are  never  accus 
tomed  to  play  the  part  of  the  spy  or  the  hound  upon 
our  families.  We  are  accustomed  to  a  general  and 
prudent  oversight  in  which  is  to  be  seen  some  of  the 
confidence  which  every  boy  must  have  extended  to 
him  if  he  be  desired  to  develope  what  is  good  and 
to  repress  what  is  evil  in  his  being.  Yet  we  inti 
mate,  or  we  avow,  our  desire  that  the  Schoolmaster 
should  take  upon  himself  the  task  of  espionage 
which  we  should  be  ashamed  for  our  sons  to  suspect 
us  of  being  capable  of  performing.  He  must  as 
sume  all  the  odium  of  restraints  that  bar  all  sym 
pathy  with  the  griefs  and  all  interest  in  the 
enjoyments  of  youth,  and  must  refuse  to  extend 
any  of  the  confidence  under  which,  at  the  home  of 
his  childhood,  the  boy  has  learned  to  despise 
falsehood  and  cowardice,  and  to  feel  the  incipient 
promptings,  and  give  the  joyous  promise,  of  an  ex 
alted  manhood.  The  most  reasonable  and  speedy 
consequence  of  such  a  discipline  is  that  our  sons 
come  soon  to  hate  the  despot  to  whose  heartless 
sway  we  have  subjected  them,  and  to  lose  the  deli 
cate  sense  of  honor  and  truth  in  the  fatal  mistake 
that  meanness  may  be  met  by  meanness,  or  that  the 
assaults  of  the  Devil  may  be  opposed  by  fire. 

It  is  most  wonderful  that  so  many  good  men 
seem  to  think  that  youth  should  be  rudely 
treated  while  it  is  growing  into  manhood.  '  How 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  25 

comes  on  that  young  nobleman  who  entered  the 
school  last  week?'  enquired  old  Dr.  Parr  of  one  of 
his  ushers.  '  Very  well  sir,'  was  the  answer;  ;he  is 
a  boy  of  fine  promise.'  '  Is  he  indeed?  Then  whip 
him  every  morning,  sir.  Do  you  hear,  sir?  Every 
morning,  sir.'  That  is  the  way.  Youth  must  be 
caged  and  watched,  and  hounded  and  herded  with 
vulgarity,  and  beaten  with  rods,  and  wallowed  in 
filth  and  lies,  and  all  this  as  a  sort  of  ordeal  through 
which  it  must  pass  in  order  to  be  able  in  after  years 
to  look  back  to  it  with  shuddering.  Alas!  that  no 
better  means  can  be  found  of  lifting  it  up  through 
these  beautiful  years  to  places  whence  it  may  see 
more  and  more  of  the  value  of  all  that  is  good  in 
the  nature  of  man,  and  thus  become  the  more  able 
to  comprehend  and  appreciate  the  goodness  of  the 
Almighty. 

Well,  there  is  no  service  so  vile  and  so  meanly 
paid  for  that  we  may  not  find  those  who  are  compe 
tent  to  perform  it.  Scullions  for  the  kitchen  may  be 
had  even  without  advertisement.  They  will  clean 
our  pots  for  small  wages,  partly  because  this  is  the 
only  service  they  know,  and  partly  because  they 
understand  the  value  of  the  perquisites  which  come 
out  of  pilferings  from  even  the  skimmings  and  the 
leavings.  So,  Legion  is  the  name  of  those  who,  for 
a  pitiful  compensation,  will  receive  our  sons  into 
their  families,  and  afterwards  persistently  eradicate 


26  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

every  sentiment  of  honor  and  gentility  by  adminis 
tering  to  them  the  discipline  due  to  felons,  and  then 
send  them  back  with  a  contempt  for  things  that  are 
sacred,  with  a  hatred  for  all  just  authority,  and  with 
the  total  loss  of  that  foundation  and  beginning  of 
all  good  education  —  the  fear  of  God.  These  are 
the  sorts  of  men  whom  society  in  general  selects  to 
lead  up  its  young  generations.  And  what  a  leading 
is  there !  The  old  fellow  of  Falerii  led  out  his  school 
and  would  deliver  them  over  to  Camillus;  but, 
shocked  by  the  enormity  of  the  crime,  the  honest 
Roman  sent  him  back  bound  and  driven  with  rods 
by  the  youths  whom  he  would  have  betrayed.  We 
suppose,  however,  that  the  Falerians  loosed  him  and 
let  him  go.  Having  made  him  what  he  was,  they 
had  no  right,  and  possibly  they  had  no  disposition, 
to  destroy  their  own  creation.  Having  a  mean  ser 
vice  to  be  performed,  they  selected  a  mean  agent; 
and  though  the  betrayal  of  their  children  to  the 
public  enemy  was  most  probably  not  nominated  in 
the  bond  of  their  contracting,  yet,  as  greater  ras 
calities  were,  he  should  have  been  discharged  from 
punishment  beyond  that  which  the  boys  themselves 
inflicted.  But  the  Personage  to  whom  the  youth  of 
this  and  all  other  known  countries  are  being  led  by 
many  of  the  schoolmasters  will  not  be  so  abhorrent 
of  crime.  That  great  Enemy  fully  intends  to 
keep  all  he  gets,  both  the  betrayed  and  the  be. 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  27 

trayers,  and  to  burn  them  in  fire   and  brimstone. 

Now  how  can  the  greater  part  of  this  folly  and 
crime  and  ruin  be  prevented?  All  indeed  cannot 
be;  for  folly  and  crime  are  the  lot  of  humanity. 
It  is  melancholy  to  see  that  the  sons  of  the  very 
best  men  may,  and  sometimes  do,  become  ruined 
even  in  the  houses  and  under  the  eyes  of  their  own 
parents.  But  the  greater  part  of  that  ruin  which 
comes  to  the  youth  in  schools,  and  which  is  by  far 
the  most  abundant  source  of  their  demoralization, 
might  be  prevented,  if  society  would  take  the  same 
pains  in  the  selection  of  teachers  as  it  takes  in  that 
of  its  agents  in  all  the  other  businesses  of  life. 
Society  needs  but  to  do  one  thing.  It  must  allow 
the  schoolmaster  to  improve  himself  if  he  will,  as 
most  probably  he  will  do  if  permission  be  granted. 
He  must  be  allowed  to  give  up  those  old  ways.  Those 
old  ways  have  too  long  already  excited  the  merri 
ment  and  the  derision  of  the  world.  They  afford  a 
species  of  fun  that  is  too  costly  to  be  indulged  in. 
Men  must  seek  amusement  in  ways  that  do  not  lead 
so  surely  to  the  destruction  of  their  best  hopes 
for  those  who  are  in  time  to  take  their  places 
and  perpetuate  their  names.  It  is  a  serious  thing 
to  provide  for  these  hopes,  implanted  in  our 
hearts  by  Heaven  in  the  first  instant  of  pater 
nity,  never  to  be  eradicated  in  this  world,  and  in 


28  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

the  next  to  yield  only  to  perfect  realization  or  to 
the  will  of  God. 

Now  does  any  one  of  our  readers  care  to  inquire 
what  course  we  think  he  should  pursue,  provided  the 
old  schoolmaster  cannot  or  will  not  change  his  ways? 
If  so,  we  answer  that  in  our  opinion,  he  should  look 
out  for  a  new  man  for  this  business.  And  there  is 
but  one  qualification  that  we  should  insist  upon. 
That  like  himself,  he  be  a  gentleman.  For  a  gentle 
man  is  one  who  lives  justly  and  considerately  among 
men  and  humbly  before  God.  Be  assured  that  a  gen 
tleman  is  competent  to  do  what  he  professes  to  be 
competent  to  do.  The  mere  knowledge  of  school 
books  any  gentleman  has  who  says  he  has  it.  The 
gift  of  impartation  of  that  knowledge  any  gentleman 
has  who  says  he  has  it.  Having  then  selected  a  gen 
tleman,  inasmuch  as  we  are  henceforth  to  feel  secure 
against  theft  on  his  part,  we  should  be  willing  to  pay 
a  fair  price  for  the  service  he  is  to  render.  That  ser 
vice  is  worth  perhaps  more  than,  without  reflection, 
we  might  suppose.  If  we  all  knew  the  amount  of  dull 
ness,  and  indolence,  and  selfishness,  and  wasteful 
ness,  and  indocility,  there  is  even  among  the  sons 
of  gentlemen,  and  the  wearisomeness  of  the  work 
which  they  impose  upon  the  hands,  and  the  head, 
and  the  heart  of  a  gentleman,  we  should  feel  that  we 
are  not  in  great  danger  of  paying  too  dearly  for  it. 
With  such  a  man  we  may  indeed  feel  secure,  and 


THE     SCHOOLMASTER.  29 

for  this,  as  much  as  for  any  other  reason  —  that  he 
is  our  equal  in  all  the  essentials  of  manhood;  that 
he  can  neither  be  ridiculed  with  justice,  nor  insulted 
with  impunity,  and  consequently  that  our  sons  will 
be  as  safe  with  him  as  his  son  would  be  with  us. 
For  such  a  man  will  no  more  play  the  part  of  spy  or 
hound  upon  our  sons  than  we  would  descend  to  this 
practise  with  his.  He  will  endeavor  to  lift  our  sons 
to  as  high  a  place  as  we  would  endeavor  to  lift  his 
son,  in  order  to  see  and  understand  the  whole  range 
of  his  relations  with  this  world  and  with  the  next, 
\yith  man  and  with  God.  All  this  will  be  very  pleas 
ant.  And  yet  one  more  pleasure  will  be  added  to 
the  list.  We  shall  see  that  in  this  relation  of  teacher 
and  pupil,  a  relation  not  dishonored  by  despotism 
or  servility,  by  suspicion  or  falsehood,  there  is  grow 
ing  a  friendship,  which,  when  it  is  between  two  per 
sons  who  trust  each  other  and  are  worthy  to  be 
trusted,  is  inferior  in  value  to  no  blessing  which  Heav 
en  has  sent  upon  the  earth.  Do  we  doubt  that  such 
a  man,  in  such  a  relation,  may  form  such  a  friendship 
with  our  sons?  If  so,  let  us  try  sometime  to  form  a 
friendship  with  his  son,  or  with  the  son  of  such  an 
other  gentleman.  We  shall  then  see  how  often  he 
will  be  touched  by  ©ur  kindness  and  respond  to  our 
confidence.  We  shall  find  that  in  many  a  boy  of 
fourteen  there  may  be  found,  by  diligent  search  and 
careful  cultivation,  sentiments  of  honor  and  friend 


30  THE     SCHOOLMASTER. 

ship,  which  sometimes  grow  even  into  enthusiasm. 
If  society  would  consent  to  such  a  change,  how 
fortunate  it  would  be  for  all;  for  itself,  for  youth 
and  for  teachers.  Fortunate  society,  in  the  ele 
vation  of  another  profession  by  accessions  from 
its  own  high  ranks,  and  in  the  security  it  would 
thenceforth  give  to  the  future  of  the  rising  gener 
ations.  Fortunate  the  rising  generations,  in  the 
possession  and  the  impartation  of  the  blessings  that 
come  when  the  heart  gets  its  education  along  with 
the  intellect.  Fortunate  the  profession  thus  exalted, 
in  the  enjoyment  not  only  of  the  common  friend 
ships  of  life,  but  in  the  continued  renewal  of  friend 
ships  down  to  its  very  goal.  Laelius,  after  the  death 
of  Scipio,  consoled  himself  with  the  friendship  of 
the  youths  Fannius,  and  Mucius,  and  Tubero.  lVi- 
cissim '  said  he,  when  now  an  old  man,  ivicissim  au- 
tem  senes  in  adolescentium  caritate  acquiescimus? 
Acquiescimus !  HOAV  expressive!  we  repose.  A 
fitting  place  for  the  rest  of  an  old  man  whose  best 
years  have  been  spent  in  the  service  of  the  young, — 
the  love  of  those  among  them  who  are  to  survive 
him. 


THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION. 


IT  is  interesting  to  study  the  peculiar  sentiments 
with  which  the  members  of  the  Bar  are  regarded 
by  the  rest  of  mankind.  The  dullest  understanding 
can  perceive  and  admit  the  necessity  of  laws,  of 
judges  to  expound  and  of  inferior  officers  to  execute 
them.  But  when  the  necessity  of  practising  lawyers 
is  suggested,  such  admission,  even  from  understand 
ings  that  have  been  highly  cultivated  by  study,  and 
observation,  and  reflection,  comes  sometimes  with 
reluctance  and  for  the  most  part  with  allowance. 
Even  men  of  letters,  even  poets,  whom  we  have 
been  taught  to  regard  as  our  best  teachers,  are  fond 
to  fling  their  pleasant  satires  at  the  lawyers.  That 
seemed  to  be  a  most  unhappy  stress  of  difficulties 
upon  one  of  Lord  Byron's  heroes  when 

*  No  choice  was  left  his  feelings  or  his  pride, 
Save  death  or  Doctors'  Commons — so  he  died.' 

We  have  read  of  the  Gammons  and  Keeps,  the  Buz- 
fuzzes  and  Tulkinghorns,  and  we  smile  at  the  absurd 
ities  and  shudder  at  the  iniquities  of  such  a  class  of 
fools  and  rascals. 

Yet  lawyers  live  and  prosper.     With  the  increase 
31 


32  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

of  wealth  and  the  advancement  of  civilization,  they 
multiply  in  numbers,  they  rise  to  the  highest  places, 
and  they  lead  in  all  the  legislation  which  controls 
the  world.  In  public  they  are  the  framers  of  laws, 
international,  constitutional,  and  muncipal :  in  pri 
vate  they  are  the  counsellors  of  the  people  in  the 
ascertainment  of  their  rights  of  person  and  prop 
erty,  then  they  make  their  last  wills  and  testa 
ments,  and  settle  and  distribute  their  estates  after 
they  are  dead.  We  may  have  our  suspicions  and 
apprehensions,  and  dislikes  of  lawyers  as  a  class; 
but  every  one  of  us  who  has  anything  which  he  de 
sires  to  keep  for  himself  or  for  those  who  are  to 
come  after  him,  knows  one  among  them  who  receives 
his  most  intimate  confidence,  and  in  whom  he  feels 
that  his  surest  reliance,  in  such  matters  whether  he 
himself  be  to  live  or  to  die,  may  be  placed.  Him  he 
consults,  in  the  matters  of  his  business  and  sometimes 
the  matters  of  his  conscience ;  and  none  but  lawyers 
know  how  much  wicked  litigation  has  been  avoided, 
how  much  meanness  has  been  repressed,  how  much 
has  justice  been  wrung  for  the  weak  and  the  innocent 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  powerful  and  the  guilty — all 
in  the  secret  counsellings  of  lawyers'  offices. 

Let  us  inquire  somewhat  into  these  contrary 
opinions.  Why  this  suspicion  in  the  general,  and 
this  confidence  in  the  particular?  Why  these  uni 
versal  warnings  against  the  class,  and  this  life -long 


THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION.  33 

resort  to  the  individual  in  all  the  most  important  and 
secret  affairs  of  life?  We  cannot  undertake  to  ans 
wer  these  questions  fully.  A  Frenchman  once  said, 
that  every  lover  has  no  doubt  of  the  infidelity  of  all 
mistresses  except  his  own.  Something  of  this  there 
may  be  in  the  relation  of  lawyers  and  clients,  and 
indeed  in  every  relation  where  confidence  must  be 
given,  because  it  renders  one  unhappy  and  afraid  to 
withhold  it.  But  the  better  and  more  substantial 
causes  are  other  than  such  as  this.  We  shall  men 
tion  one  or  two. 

We  must  premise  what  we  have  to  say  about  the 
suspicions  concerning  this  class  of  professional  men 
wherever  it  exists,  by  observing  that  they  attach  to 
them  as  lawyers.  We  have  sometimes  been  in 
tensely  amused  to  notice  how  many  persons  have 
been  puzzled  by  their  own  conflicting  sentiments 
regarding  some  of  the  best  men  of  our  acquaintance. 
While  the  latter  have  been  known  to  be  perfectly 
upright  in  their  personal  concerns,  beloved  in  their 
families,  and  admired  by  all  their  neighbors  for  being 
kind  and  liberal,  the  former  have  seemed  to  be 
touched  with  an  indefinable  sort  of  compassion  or 
regret  at  being  obliged  to  consider  them  as  un 
scrupulous  in  the  court-room,  mystifiers  of  the  law, 
perverters  of  the  truth,  and  the  fast  friends  of  knaves 
of  many  descriptions. 

The  principal    reasons  for    these     irreconcilable 


34  THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

opinions,  are  such  as  grow  partly  out  of  the  law  it 
self,  and  partly  out  of  some  misapprehensions  as  to 
the  duties  of  lawyers :  misapprehensions  that  are  not 
confined  to  outsiders,  but  are  held  by  not  an  incon 
siderable  number  of  the  profession  itself.  Especial 
ly  is  this  the  case  with  that  system  of  laws  by  which 
the  people  of  this  country  and  those  in  Great  Britian 
are  controlled.  Our  ancestors,  so  far  removed  from 
the  ancient  seats  of  European  civilization,  had  the 
misfortune  of  failing  to  obtain  the  benefits  of  the 
Civil  Law,  that  best  and  noblest  monument  of  genius 
that  was  ever  erected.  Founded  upon  the  teach 
ings  of  the  wise  and  good  of  all  nations,  *  it  en 
joined  not  only  the  fullest  justice,  but  it  invited  to 
the  most  delicate  and  scrupulous  honor.  It  sought 
to  lift  mankind  out  of  the  fiery  struggles,  the  selfish 
aims,  and  the  mean  desires  of  life,  and  present  to 
their  view  a  higher  scale,  yet  fully  practicable  for 
this  .world,  on  which  justice  and  honor  might  journey 
hand  in  hand,  and  all  men,  great  and  small,  might 
joy  in  the  sight.  To  live  justly,  to  hurt  no  man,  to 
give  every  one  his  own,  were  its  leading  maxims, 
and  whoever  followed  them  strictly  attained  as  close 
an  approximation  to  perfection  as  is  in  the  capacity 
of  human  nature.  What  people  were  those  Romans ! 

*  In  the  year  B.  C.  452,  three  Commissioners  were  sent  'beyond 
seas'  to  collect,  in  Greece  especially,  such  notices  of  the  laws  and 
constitutions  of  other  peoples  as  might  be  of  service  to  the  wants  of 
Rome.— GRAPEL  ON  THE  CIVIL  LAW. 


THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION.  35 

Great  in  all  things;  even  in  those  which  time  and 
different  civilizations  have  destroyed  or  modified; 
but  greatest  of  all  in  this,  that  their  laws,  the  work 
of  all  their  ages,  are  yet  made  to  control  all  the 
countries  over  which  their  rule  was  extended. 

But  our  ancestors,  separated  from  the  rest  of  the 
world  by  intervening  seas,  in  a  bleak  region,  where 
to  live  was  difficult,  and  poverty  was  a  more  com 
mon  and  a  harder  misfortune  than  in  the  South,  in 
the  absence  of  wise  men  to  think  and  devise  for 
them,  could  only  find  laws  for  their  government  in 
the  midst  of  their  dealings  among  themselves.  In 
the  failure  of  positive  legislative  enactments,  their 
usages  became  the  standards  by  which  the  common 
disputes  were  to  be  composed.  Out  of  these  us 
ages,  some  of  them  absurd,  some  of  them  atrocious, 
sprang  up  that  Common  Law  which,  with  what 
modifications  it  has  undergone  in  the  lapse  of  cent 
uries,  together  with  such  restraints  as  Equity  has 
been  obliged  to  impose  whenever  its  operation  has 
been  grossly  unconscionable,  is  the  system  under 
which  we  live.  Less  humane  than  the  Civil  Law 
which  was  founded  upon  the  idea  of  what  mankind 
ought  to  be  and  might  be,  it  has  been  builded  upon 
the  observation  of  what  mankind  are.  Yet  it  is  a 
great  system,  and  in  the  main  sufficiently  regardful 
of  the  rights  of  those  who  have  it  to  obey.  If  it 
seems  sometimes  to  present  temptation  to  bad  men 


36  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

to  entrap  the  unwary,  its  general  provisions  are  de 
signed  to  afford  abundant  protection  to  the  circum 
spect;  and  the  tendency  of  recent  legislations  and 
recent  judicial  rulings  is,  we  are  gratified  to  observe, 
in  the  direction  of  that  larger  and  more  generous 
policy  which  recognizes  in  humanity  the  possibili 
ties  of  things  higher  than  mere  common  honesty, 
and  persuades  to  their  exercise.  Nor  can  we  for 
bear  to  admit  that  among  the  Romans  there  were 
tricksters  who  were  at  once  the  disgrace  of  the  profes 
sion,  the  butt  of  the  satirist's  ridicule,  and  the  honor 
able  man's  contempt.  There  were  the  Leguleius  * 
and  the  Rabula,  t  the  former  a  mere  man  of  books, 
and  the  latter  a  mean  pettifogger.  They  had  their 
ways  in  Rome  as  their  likes  have  them  with  us,  and 
as  all  such  characters  in  all  vocations  will  have  their 
ways  until  the  world  becomes  many  times  wiser  than 
it  is  or  has  been. 

Yet  every  system  of  laws  must  necessarily  fall 
short  of  some  of  its  purposes,  and  thus  create  in  the 
minds  of  men  unlearned  in  its  mysteries  incorrect 
views  of  the  duties  of  those  who  practise  it.  The 
law  is  founded  upon  general  principles,  the  very 
universality  of  which  sometimes  must  operate  dis- 

*  'Qui  enim  leges,  quas  memoria  tenet,  non  intelligit,  Leguleius 
vocatur  a  Cicerone.' — HEINECCIUS  ELEMENTA  JURIS. 

•j-  'Qui  ergo  nulla  accuratione  juris  notitia  imbutus,  cruda  studia  in 
forum  propellit,  evertendisque  aliorum  fortunis  quaestum  facit,  Ka- 
bula  vocatur  ab  eodum  Cicerone/ — IB. 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  37 

astrously  in  particular  cases,  and  give  to  bad  men 
the  opportunity  to  injure  the  just  with  impunity.  In 
vain  did  the  Praetor  among  the  Romans,  and  in 
vain  do  Courts  of  Equity  with  us  interfere  by  in 
junction  with  its  strict  enforcements,  whenever 
their  execution  is  unconscionably  oppressive.  There 
are  frauds  and  other  wrongs  which  no  courts  can 
reach,  which  spring  from  the  very  laws  which  were 
intended  to  prevent  them,  and  which  do  prevent 
them  in  general.  Thus,  the  Statute  for  the  preven 
tion  of  Frauds,  a  most  wise  and  beneficient  law, 
offers  temptations  to  the  dishonest,  of  which  they 
too  often  avail  themselves  to  ensnare  the  upright. 
So  the  maxim,  'ignorantia  legis  nou  cxcusat]  neces 
sary  as  it  is,  operates  most  injuriously  sometimes, 
and  it  thus  operates  most  frequently  upon  those 
who,  being  most  honest,  are  least  apprehensive  of 
suffering  wrong.  Neither  lawyers  nor  courts,  are  re 
sponsible  for  these  infirmities,  which  are  but  evi 
dences  to  be  added  to  those  furnished  by  other  sys 
tems  of  man's  devising,  that  nothing  he  does  can  be 
made  perfect. 

Difficulties  of  the  sorts  just  mentioned,  (and  we 
may  allude  to  others  as  we  proceed,)  common  to 
all  law,  and  some  peculiar  to  those  under  which  we 
live,  lead  to  misapprehensions  as  to  what  are  the 
duties  as  well  as  what  are  the  rights  of  lawyers.  It 
is  worthy  of  remark,  that  many  men,  whose  careers, 


38  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

• 

while  at  the  bar,  were  not  very  remarkable,  whether 
in  the  matter  of  professional  ability,  or  professional 
deportment,  when  they  have  gone  upon  the  bench, 
have  risen  in  a  comparatively  brief  period  into  un 
expected  and  extravagant  credit.  The  people,  from 
having  seen  such  men  practise  for  a  long  time  those 
little  arts  which  inferior  minds  are  the  quickest  to 
learn,  seem  often  to  be  thankful  to  see  such  a  man 
lay  all  such  arts  aside,  rule  vexed  questions  without 
embarrassment,  and  endeavor,  with  decent  magis 
terial  severity,  to  repress  all  unbecoming  things  in 
the  officers  of  his  court.  Now  it  is  much  easier  to 
decide  a  case  than  to  argue  it.  Some  men,  though 
feeble  lawyers,  make  respectable  judges  —  not  great 
judges  —  for  these  can  be  made  only  of  great  law 
yers.  Such  a  judge,  if  he  preside  over  an  able  bar, 
and  if  with  ordinary  understanding  he  have  acquired 
a  fair  professional  education,  may  decide  most  cases 
aright.  Besides,  the  mere  exaltation  to  office  carries 
to  the  majority  of  mankind  the  credit  of  deserving 
it.  Lord  Jeffreys  said  to  Robert  Wright,  who  was 
notorious  both  for  his  ignorance  a.nd  his  knaveries, 
'As  you  seem  to  be  unfit  for  the  bar,  or  any  other 
honest  calling,  I  see  nothing  for  it  but  that  you  should 
become  a  judge  yourself;'  and  in  spite  of  the  re 
monstrances  of  the  Prime  Minister,  he  was  knighted, 
and  afterwards  made  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England. 
This  is  an  extreme  case,  we  admit,  but  there  was 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  39 

some  wisdom  (of  its  kind,)  in  the  magnate  who  thus 
elevated  him,  and  who  foresaw  that  much  of  his  un- 
fitness  for  office  would  disappear  from  the  eyes  of 
men  on  the  day  of  his  installation. 

But  what  is  yet  more  to  be  noticed  in  this  con 
nection  is  this:  The  duties  of  a  judge  are  essen 
tially  different  from  those  of  a  lawyer.  Upon  the 
former  there  is  the  obligation,  formed  by  his  oath 
and  the  solemn  behests  of  office,  to  pursue  the  truth, 
singly  and  always.  But  the  truth  in  judicial  causes 
has  many  similitudes,  and  is  difficult  to  be  ascer 
tained,  and  varies  with  every  circumstance  of  life. 
Out  of  the  innumerable  transactions  ot  mankind, 
and  the  multifold  and  subtle  agencies  which  bring 
them  on  and  attend  and  follow  them,  there  must 
constantly  arise,  even  among  the  upright,  conflicts 
of  opinion  regarding  the  ultimate  truth,  and  the 
best  legal  minds  will  differ  as  to  where  it  is  to  be 
found.  The  judge  himself  is  often  incompetent  to 
its  ascertainment  until  after  argumentation  between 
these  contending  similitudes.  It  is,  therefore,  not 
only  the  right  of  the  advocate,  but  it  is  his  duty  to 
present  his  similitude  with  whatever  ability  he  can 
command,  to  strive  for  its  establishment,  provided 
that  he  attempt  no  perversions,  either  of  facts  or  of 
laws  already  ascertained,  and  feel  in  his  breast 
throughout  the  conflict  a  love  for  the  honor  of  his 
profession,  and  a  reverence  for  the  justice,  which  it 


40  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

is  his  mission  to  conserve,  that  are  superior  to  the 
desire  for  his  client's  success,  and  the  reward  which 
is  to  follow  it.  A  rule  of  morals  which  would  fix  his 
responsibilities  higher  than  this  would  be  unreason 
able  and  impracticable. 

It  is  after,  and  by  means  of,  the  contests  of  men 
like  this  that  the  judge,  whose  understanding  mean 
while  has  been  oscillating  between  contending  sim 
ilitudes,  decides  which  is  the  real  truth,  and  which 
is  only  its  image.  When  this  decision  is  rendered 
in  the  unimpassioned  and  decorous  terms  becoming 
such  a  tribunal,  although  it  is  frequently  rendered 
with  hesitation,  it  is  curious  to  see  how  submissively 
bystanders  bow  to  the  judgment,  and  with  what  ad 
miration  and  even  reverence  they  contemplate  the 
calm  dignity  so  unlike  the  heated  combats  of  the 
men  to  whose  elaborate  endeavors,  though  unknown 
to  them  and  too  often  unacknowledged  by  the  court, 
he  is  indebted  for  the  power  to  decide  aright  when 
he  does  so  decide.* 

It  is  thus  that  many  persons  while  they  condemn 
the  advocate,  revere  the  magistrate.  With  the 

*Cice*o,  whose  work  on  morals  is  the  greatest  of  all  uninspired 
writings,  allows  a  little  more  latitude  to  lawyers.  '  Judicis  est,'  he 
says, '  semper  in  causis  verwm  sequi;  patroni,  nonnunquam  veri 
simile,  etramsi  minus  sit  verum,  defendere.1 — De  Officiis,  Lib.  n, 
Cap.  XIV.  But  he  does  so  with  some  hesitation,  and  only  upon  the 
authority  of  Panaetius.  Thus  he  continues:  '  Quod  scribere  (pras- 
sertim  cum  de  philosophia  scriberem)  non  auderem,  nisi  idem  pla- 
ceret  gravissimo  stoicorum  Panaetio.' 


THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION.  41 

former  they  suppose  the  love  of  truth  to  be  behind 
the  desire  of  fame  and  especially  of  money.  The 
latter,  upon  that  lofty  seat,  is  regarded  as  freed  from 
the  love  of  praise  and  pelf,  above  all  prejudice  and 
passion,  and  taking  an  almost  holy  delight  in  frown-. 
ing  upon  the  fierce  conflicts  of  the  world  and  its 
representatives,  in  establishing  justice,  and  main 
taining  the  peace  They  seem  to  regard  lawyers  as 
the  especial  enemies  and  persecutors  of  these  be 
nign  things,  justice  and  peace,  and  but  for  that 
blessed  man  on  the  bench  they  would  be  lost  in  the 
midst  of  their  subtleties,  and  quillets,  and  clamorous 
contentions. 

It  is  remarkable  that  while  we  can  make  allow 
ance  for  the  progress  of  every  other  science  and 
every  other  business  of  life,  we  cannot  allow  for  muta 
tions  in  that  which  is  at  once  the  most  variant  and 
profound  and  important  of  all.  At  every  session 
of  every  court  of  extensive  jurisdiction,  there  arise 
disputes  which  involve  new  questions,  or  variations 
of  old  questions,  which  must  be  settled  anew,  and 
that  only  by  long,  ardent,  and  able  argumentation. 
To  wonder  at  this  eternal  conflict  is  as  unreason 
able  as  to  wonder  at  the  various  faces,  and  forms, 
and  dispositions  of  men.  The  principles  of  the 
law  have  grown,  like  the  human  race,  from  a  few  in 
the  beginning  up  to  ever  increasing  multitudes, 
generations  of  the  one  dying  away  and  generations 


42  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

of  the  other  becoming  obsolete,  yet  every  genera 
tion  of  both  inheriting  from  its  predecessors  some 
thing  which  must  be  made  to  conform  to  the  multi 
plying  necessities  of  the  world.  These  necessities 
arise  in  all  places  where  the  hands  or  the  under 
standings  of  men  are  wont  to  labor  in  order  to  in 
crease  whatever  they  may  wish  to  have  for  any  of 
the  purposes  of  life.  They  arise  day  by  day,  in  the 
field  of  the  farmer,  in  the  shop  of  the  mechanic,  in 
the  storehouse  of  the  merchant,  in  the  cloister  of 
the  student,  everywhere,  on  the  land,  upon  the  wa 
ters,  in  the  air,  wheresoever  God  has  allowed  men 
to  abide,  or  to  explore,  in  order  to  find  and  to 
gather  whatever  it  is  lawful  to  possess.  Thus,  with 
the  lapsing  years,  and  the  changing  and  multiplying 
pursuits  of  men,  new  principles  have  to  be  estab 
lished,  new  punishments  must  be  applied  to  new 
offences,  and  sometimes  to  old  ones,  when  by  the 
changes  of  manners  and  tastes  they  have  grown  to 
be  inadequate  or  oppressive.  Inasmuch  as  the  laws 
are  general  in  their  terms,  and  cases  arising  under 
them  are  special  in  their  own  particulars,  every  judge 
needs  new  argumentation,  long,  and  able,  and  ar 
dent,  we  repeat  it,  in  order  to  be  enabled  to  find, 
in  the  midst  of  these  accretions  from  every  source, 
the  Truth,  which  it  is  his  province  to  dispense. 

'What  is  truth,'  said  jesting  Pilate,' and  would  not 
stay  for  an    answer.'     Wiser  and  better   men  than 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  43 

Pilate  ask  the  same  question  after  long,  and  patient, 
and  loving  search.  That  truth  is  difficult  to  be  as 
certained,  the  thousands  of  sects,  and  parties,  and 
wars,  both  of  books  and  swords,  declare.  On  the  ques 
tion  of  what  is  truth,  good  and  wise  men  differ  even 
as  do  bad  men  and  fools.  In  our  degenerate  estate, 
truth  seems  to  assume  many  shapes,  and  to  vary  them 
in  different  places  and  before  different  beholders.  It 
was  a  beautiful  fancy  of  the  poet,  in  which  the  fol 
lowers  of  truth  are  likened  to  the  bereaved  Isis  and 
her  priesthood  in  their  picas  search  for  the  mangled 
and  scattered  members  of  the  body  of  the  good 
Osiris.  Philosophers  and  law-givers  admit  the  im 
possibility  of  fixing  perfectly  just  principles  of  truth 
even  in  the  general.  '  We  have  no  solid  and  express 
effigy  of  Law,  and  of  Justice,  her  sister.  We  can 
only  employ  their  shadow  and  their  images.'  These 
are  the  words  of  one  who,  in  our  opinion,  was  as 
complete  a  man  as  has  lived  in  any  time  — 
Cicero,  the  lawyer  and  orator,  the  consul  and  phil 
osopher.  Yet,  in  praising  even  the  golden  rule  of 
the  Civil  Law,  that  all  transactions  of  business 
ought  to  correspond  with  the  good  conduct  of  good 
men  with  one  another,  he  sighed  to  be  compelled  to 
add  these  following:  'But  who  are  good  men?  and 
what  is  good  conduct?  These  are  great  questions.'* 

*  'Sed  nos  veri  juris  germanaeque  justitiae  solidam  et  expressam 
effigiem  nullam  tenemus;  umbra  et  imaginibus  utimur.     Qi.iam  ilia 


44  THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

In  the  numberless  relations  of  men,  good  and  bad, 
among  the  different  views  which,  from  their  various 
positions  they  have  of  the  right,  an  approximation 
to  its  ascertainment  is  all  that  can  be  hoped  for, 
and  while  we  believe  that  this  approximation  to  all 
its  intentions  is  closer  in  the  law  than  in  any  other 
science  not  based  upon  mathematical  demonstrations, 
this  is  due  mainly  to  those  same  forensic  conflicts 
which  men  are  so  wont  to  criticise  and  to  blame. 
There  is  nothing,  therefore,  in  the  fancied  anomaly 
of  an  honest  man  who  is  a  dishonest  lawyer.  When 
ever  such  a  man  comes  to  the  Bar,  there  comes  a 
mighty  blessing  to  his  neighborhood.  If,  in  the 
ardor  of  the  devotion  which  he  carries  to  the  causes 
of  his  clients,  he  seems  sometimes  to  combat  too 
zealously  for  his  own  similitude  before  the  real  right 
has  been  ascertained,  we  shall  make  a  great  mistake 
if  we  suppose  that  the  real  right  can  be  ascertained 
otherwise  than  by  the  combats  of  him  with  others 
like  him.  And  we  shall  make  a  greater  mistake 
if  we  suspect  that  he  has  lost,  or  is  apt  to  lose,  the 
heart  to  love  and  adore  the  truth  when,  after  such 
combats,  it  is  unveiled  before  his  eyes. 

But  the  misapprehensions  that  are  most  hurtful  to 
the  profession  are  those  which  are  entertained  by  a 

aurea,  UT  INTER  BONOS  BENE  AGIER  OPORTET  ET  SINE  FRAUDATIONE! 
Sed,  qui  sint  boni,  et  quid  sit  bene  agi,  magria  quaestio  est.' — Cic. 
DE.  OFF.,  LIB.  III.,  CAP.  XVII. 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  45 

considerable  number  of  its  own  members.  For  the 
infirmities  of  these,  in  spite  of  its  shining  ornaments, 
it  has  always  suffered  and  must  continue  to  suffer. 
A  lawyer  who  is  a  bad  man  is  the  most  mischievous 
and  dangerous  person  with  whom  one  can  be  con 
fronted.  It  is  sad  to  contemplate  the  annoyance 
and  distress  which  such  a  man  may  inflict,  during 
a  lifetime,  upon  even  the  good  men  of  society. 
Such  a  man  may  become  a  spy  upon  other  men,  and 
obtain  an  incredible  amount  of  acquaintance  with 
all  their  most  important  concerns.  This  is  especially 
the  case  in  agricultural  communities,  where  men  are 
less  familiar  than  those  in  cities  and  towns  with  the 
forms  of  business  which  are  necessary  to  its  safe  and 
proper  conduct.  In  the  intercourse  of  the  citizens 
of  such  communities,  the  omission  of  such  forms 
with  the  best  and  most  honest  men  render  their 
transactions  unintelligible  to  those  who,  after  lapse 
of  time,  come  to  look  upon  their  records.  The  con 
fidence  which  they  have  in  one  another,  so  beautiful 
to  behold,  and  so  sweet  to  feel,  induces  a  neglect 
much  beyond  what  mere  ignorance  would  create ; 
and  the  usages  of  friendship  and  good  neighborhood 
make  them  satisfied  with  settlements  which  are  too 
often  unaccompanied  by  written  memoranda.  By 
and  by,  some  of  these  good  men  become  alienated 
from  one  another.  By  and  by,  some  of  them  die. 
Old  frendships  seldom  descend  from  one  generation 


46  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

to  another.  Besides,  it  is  a  sad  truth  that  the 
greatest  robberies  are  those  that  are  committed  by 
the  living  upon  the  dead.  All  thieves,  little  and 
great,  from  the  grave-digger  and  the  coffin-maker 
upward,  understand  that. 

Now  this  especial  bad  man,  who  is  worse  than  all 
other  thieves  and  robbers,  and  whose  wont  it  has 
been  to  prowl  about  Probates'  offices,  and  pore  over 
ancient  and  imperfect  records,  and  pick  news 
mongers  and  retailers  of  old  scandals,  makes  up  his 
record,  and  to  the  covetous,  and  prodigal,  and 
bankrupt,  he  complains  how  they  have  been  wronged, 
and  insinuates  how,  through  his  means,  their  wrongs 
may  be  redressed;  and  then  a  small  retainer  and  a 
great  contingent,  are  the  preliminaries  to  suits  upon 
Administrators'  bonds  or  to  Bills  in  Equity,  which 
charge  every  form  of  mismanagement  and  fraud 
upon  the  best  men  and  involve  them  or  their  repre 
sentatives  in  long  and  ruinous  litigation.  We  have 
known  very  many  of  such  cases,  and  we  have  sighed, 
and  could  have  wept  to  witness  the  misery  which 
they  have  produced.  Many  a  good  man,  in  his  ab 
horrence  of  courts,  though  conscious  of  perfect 
innocence,  and  though  assured  by  reliable  counsel 
of  eventual  release,  prefers  to  buy  his  peace  with  a 
price  which  enables  the  mean  pettifogger  to  live  in 
comfort  for  a  long  time  afterwards.  Another,  less 
timid  and  less  averse  to  strife,  elects  to  fight  it  out 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  47 

on  the  line  proposed,  indulging  himself  to  an  oc 
casional  imprecation  upon  the  head  captain  of  his 
enemies,  and  in  time  may  have  his  verdict.  But 
the  payment  of  his  own  counsel,  the  charge  of  sundry 
items,  about  which  he  and  all  his  friends  have  for 
gotten,  the  fees  of  witnesses,  the  loss  of  other 
interests  by  his  attendance  upon  courts,  all  con 
vince  him  that  his  more  timid  neighbor,  who  bought 
himself  off,  was  wiser  than  he  who  fought  himself 
out ;  and  he  is  denied  even  the  consolation  of  feel 
ing  that  his  imprecations  have  done  either  harm  or 
good  to  the  man  whom  he  is  right  in  regarding  as 
the  worst  of  all  rascals.  Cases  like  these  are  fre 
quent  in  some  communities,  and  they  sometimes 
occur  in  all.  How  many  miseries  they  produce, 
how  many  alienations  of  friends  and  families,  how 
many  wrongs  of  all  sorts  and  forms,  only  God  above 
knows.  Perhaps  in  this  we  mistake.  Perhaps  they 
are  all  known  to  the  greal  Spirit  of  Evil  below,  and 
he  has  his  antepast  of  enjoyment.  If  not  now,  they 
will  be  known  in  season;  for  they  are  done  by  his 
inspiration,  and  upon  him  will  devolve  their  settle 
ment  at  the  last. 

Much  above  those  who  have  described  is  another 
class  whose  misapprehensions  as  to  the  scope  of 
their  duties,  are  more  hurtful  to  the  profession  than 
they  are  apt  to  be  aware.  With  this  class  the 
standard  of  professional  deportment  does  fall  some- 


48  THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

what  below  that  which  they  are  in  the  habit  of 
maintaining  in  the  other  relations  of  life.  In  the 
eagerness  with  which  many  young  men  desire  noto 
riety,  which  they  suppose  to  be  necessary  to  speedy 
success,  they  are  thrown  into  cases  of  doubtful  right 
by  the  aid  of  injudicious  friends,  or  by  their  volun 
teering;  and  thus  they  form  habits  of  asseverating 
unformed  opinions  and  clamoring  for  doubtful  points 
which  must  tend  to  diminish  the  love,  and  even 
obtund  the  sense  of  truth.  Some  of  such  men  come 
to  believe  that  it  it  is  not  wrong  to  take  any  case 
that  presents  itself,  and  having  appeared  in  it,  that 
their  duty,  or  at  least  their  right,  is  to  push  it  along 
without  considering  any  question  except  what  may 
appertain  to  the  interests  of  their  clients.  With  an 
able  and  upright  judge  these  are  not  wont  to  do  a 
very  great  amount  of  mischief  to  the  public ;  but 
they  hurt  both  themselves  and  their  better  brethren. 
They  hurt  themselves  by  failing,  through  their  own 
fault,  to  rise  as  high  as  different  deportment  would 
elevate  them;  and  they  hurt  their  better  brethren 
by  carelessly  lowering  their  profession  in  the  eyes  of 
mankind  and  subjecting  it  to  unjust  reproach.  And 
they  assuredly  do  some  harm  to  society  in  this,  that 
their  too  frequent  and  unfair  defense  of  transactions 
plainly  unjust,  makes  them  often  appear  to  disregard 
the  principles  both  of  law  and  morality. 

It  is  an  unhappy  mistake  that  many  lawyers  who 


THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION.  49 

are  net  bad  men  make,  in  believing  that  the  whole 
question  of  conscience  resides  always  with  their 
clients.  Every  lawyer  should  feel  that  it  is  his  duty 
to  be  a  conservator  of  those  things  which  the  laws 
enjoin;  and  while  he  may  rightfully  aid  a  client  in 
obtaining  the  benefit  of  any  law  that  is  applicable 
to  his  case,  he  ought  to  counsel  against  the  accept 
ance  of  that  benefit  when  it  is  to  operate  gross  in 
justice  to  others.  For  example:  While  it  is  not 
unprofessional,  nor  in  any  degree  wrong,  to  file  a 
plea  of  usury,  a  lawyer  owes  this  much  to  everybody, 
himself,  society,  and  especially  his  client,  to  persuade 
him,  if  possible,  to  refrain  from  accepting  a  dishon 
est  release  from  the  fulfilment  of  his  own  solemn 
obligation.  The  men  who  refuse  to  consider  such 
counsel  as  coming  within  the  intention  of  their  pro 
fessional  duties,  may  be,  and  many  of  them  are, 
upright  in  their  own  personal  lives,  humane,  gener 
ous,  social ;  but  they  fall  short  of  conserving,  and 
even  of  beholding,  the  great,  superior  purposes  of 
the  law,  and  they  miss  that  very  highest  felicity  of 
this  lower  life,  the  opportunities  of  doing  good. 

But  there  is  a  class  of  lawyers  who  do  well  em 
ploy  these  blessed  opportunities.  Many  such  there 
are  in  many  communities.  Would  that  there  were 
more,  and  that  they  were  in  all.  To  be  such  men 
the  highest  intellectual  abilities  are  not  requisite. 
4 


50  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

While  in  that  middle  class  just  described,  there  are 
sometimes  found  men  of  intellect  enough  to  rise  to 
any  eminence  by  the  persistent  love  and  pursuit  of 
justice,  it  is  most  pleasing  to  find  in  this  upper  class 
men  in  whom  such  love  and  pursuit  have  lifted  un 
derstandings  that  are  less  than  first-rate  up  to  the 
power  to  see  and  to  advocate  truth,  which  is  super 
ior  to  the  genius  that,  for  the  want  of  these  virtues, 
loses  in  the  lapse  of  time,  both  the  power  to  see  and 
the  power  to  advocate.  For  truth,  even  in  this 
world,  rewards  her  worshippers,  while  she  punishes 
her  enemies.  The  latter  she  sometimes  blinds  in 
the  knowledge  of  how  to  come  to  her  shrine,  even 
when  they  seek  to  come  with  serious  devotion,  but 
after  having  been  wont  to  come  too  seldom  and  with 
too  reluctant  sacrifice.  The  former,  who  never  bow 
the  knee  elsewhere,  become  so  accustomed  to  her 
presence  and  her  inspiration,  that  they  seem  to  par 
take  even  of  her  divine  nature.  How  many  men 
have  we  known  at  the  bar  \vho,  although  they  did 
not  seem  at  first  to  be  qualified  for  its  successful 
pursuit,  yet,  by  patient  labor  and  the  continuous 
practice  of  integrity,  have  attained  to  fame;  while 
others,  apparently  more  gifted,  by  failing  to  learn 
or  to  practise  the  great  duties  of  the  profession,  have 
ended  their  careers  without  honor. 

Now  while  we  are  far  from  claiming  for  such  men 
perfection,  we    do  think  that  they  attain   as   close 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  51 

an  approximation  to  it  as  any  men  in  any  secular 
vocation;  and  that  in  the  matter  of  usefulness  they 
ascend  higher  than  all  others.  The  science  of  the 
law  embraces  every  business  of  life.  Those  two 
things,  rights  and  wrongs,  attach  themselves  every 
moment  of  time,  to  all  mankind  from  the  highest  to 
the  lowest.  They  are  as  interesting  to  one  man  as 
they  are  to  another;  the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich. 
The  houseless  beggar,  the  sad  lunatic,  the  raving 
maniac,  the  driveling  idiot,  the  infant,  the  infant  not 
yet  escaped  from  its  mother's  womb,  the  outlaw,  the 
felon,  yea,  the  convicted  felon  who  is  awaiting  in  his 
cell  the  day  of  execution,  all  have  their  rights  and 
may  have  their  wrongs ;  and  the  law  irregular,  and 
desultory,  and  rambling,  and  self-contradicting  as  it 
seems  to  be,  is  ever  striving  to  provide  for  them  all. 
There  is  nothing  more  important,  indeed,  in  the 
merely  human  business  of  life,  there  is  nothing  so 
important  as  that  these  rights  and  wrongs  be  well 
understood,  in  order  that  the  former  be  faithfully 
defended,  and  the  latter  be  adequately  redressed. 
It  is  a  happy  thing  for  society  when  a  young  man  of 
the  true  generous  breed  applies  himself  to  this  good 
work.  In  his  early  years  he  gives,  and  he  has  to 
give  to  it  his  days  and  his  nights.  While  he  is 
learning  it  well,  his  youth  is  gone.  Before  he  has 
learned  it  all,  age  comes  upon  him  and  he  retires  to 
die.  Yet,  by  the  full  ripening  of  his  manhood,  he 


52  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

has  reached  a  position  in  which  he  may  safely  be 
trusted  by  all  who  need  his  knowledge  and  his  serv 
ice.  When  men  come  to  him  for  counsel  the  studies 
of  years  enable  him,  and  the  habitual  practice  of 
honor  prompts  him,  to  bestow  that  counsel  wisely 
and  truly.  When  their  rights  have  been  assailed, 
he  defends  them  against  every  form  of  attack. 
When  they  are  only  supposed  to  be  injured,  he 
counsels  them  to  withdraw  from  the  contest,  and  if 
he  be  not  hearkened  to,  he  dismisses  them  to  other 
men  who  are  less  scrupulous.  When  from  the 
peculiar  circumstances  he  be  uncertain  sometimes 
whether  those  rights  be  assailed  or  not,  then,  unless 
they  can  be  adjusted  by  compromise,  he  brings  or 
defends  their  suits,  and  maintains  his  own  similitude 
of  the  right  until  judgment  is  rendered  by  the 
courts. 

Now  it  is  just  here,  in  courts,  that  are  to  be  seen 
those  most  common  misapprehensions  of  the  public 
in  regard  to  the  duties  of  lawyers.  They  think  it 
strange  that  two  men,  who  claim  to  be  considered 
upright  and  sincere,  should  meet  from  court  to 
court,  from  day  to  day,  in  constant,  ardent  antagon 
isms.  But  the  public  does  not  sufficiently  consider 
that  these  antagonisms  have  their  inception  with 
parties  themselves,  and  that  it  rarely,  if  indeed  it 
ever  happens,  that  the  most  honest  client  blames 
the  ardor  of  his  patron's  advocacy.  Then  the  public 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  53 

does  not  reflect  that  its  non-acquaintance  with  laws, 
except  their  most  general  principles,  disqualifies  it 
from  recognizing  the  infinite  variety  of  circum 
stances  which  may  take,  or  seem  to  take,  a  newly 
arisen  case  out  of  the  circle  of  former  precedents, 
and  that  judges,  notwithstanding  their  decent 
deportment  and  learned  looks,  are  incapable,  until 
after  such  argumentation,  to  determine  how  they 
ought  to  adjudicate.  Besides,  among  the  different 
men  who  have  been  upon  the  Bench,  rulings,  even 
upon  the  same  points,  have  been  variant  according 
to  their  capacities,  and  dispositions,  and  likings, 
and  prejudices.  It  makes  a  vast  difference  whether 
Labeo  be  the  magistrate,  or  Capito;  whether  Mans 
field  or  Kenyon.  While  the  mind  of  one  leans  to 
liberal  constructions,  and  seeks  to  bring  the  laws 
along  with  the  changing  conditions  of  a  nation's 
civilization,  that  of  another  is  fond  to  overrule  all 
innovations,  and  strives  to  restore  every  ancient 
landmark  that,  from  whatever  cause,  has  been,  or  he 
believes  to  have  been,  removed. 

This  reference  to  the  different  sorts  of  judges  opens 
to  our  view  a  wide  field,  if  we  had  the  time  to 
speculate  upon  it.  We  have  said  that  it  was  less 
difficult  to  adjudicate  a  case  than  to  argue  it.  But 
it  must  not  be  understood  that  we  maintain  that  it 
is  not  very  difficult  to  be  a  good  judge.  To  be  a 
good  judge  requires  a  combination  of  so  many  gifts 


54  THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

that  it  ought  to  be  surprising  to  consider  how  many 
men  desire  that  office,  and  what  kinds  of  men  some 
times  are  nominated  to  it.  One  of  the  most  difficult 
questions  for  statesmen  to  determine  has  been,  how 
it  is  best  for  judges  to  be  made,  and  what  should  be 
the  duration  of  their  incumbency.  Many  a  man 
has  risen  from  the  Bar  whose  judicial  career  has 
widely  differed  from  that  which  his  professional  be 
havior  foretold.  It  is  singular  what  a  temptation 
there  seems  always  to  have  been  to  newly-elected 
judges  to  distinguish  their  administrations  by  unex 
pected  deflections  from  the  ways  of  former  adminis 
trations.  From  the  impossibility,  resulting  from  the 
infinitude  of  its  subtleties,  of  fixing  perfectly  settled 
principles  of  law  in  all  cases,  a  hazardous  amount 
of  discretion  must  he  allowed  to  every  judge  which 
he  may  hurtfully  abuse.  It  was  so  much  abused  in 
the  times  of  our  ancestors,  that  Lord  Camden  de 
signated  it  'the  law  of  tyrants.'  In  its  exercise 
many  a  fantastic  trick  has  been  played  by  many  a 
magistrate,  small  and  great.  In  the  bewilderment 
in  which  juries,  unlearned  in  the  law,  are  wont  to 
be  involved  by  the  strivings  of  opposing  counsel, 
the  magistrate  has  a  fair  opportunity  to  exercise  that 
discretion  according  to  his  temper,  his  constitution, 
his  passion,  or  the  expectations  that  he  may 
found  upon  the  opinions  which  men  may  have  of  his 
administration.  The  histories,  and  the  traditions, 


THE    LEGAL    PROFESSION.  55 

and  our  own  observations  tell  us  how  capricious 
that  exercise  has  been.  In  the  early  struggles  be 
tween  liberty  and  prerogative,  it  varied  little  from  a 
decided  preponderance  in  favor  of  the  latter.  We 
shudder  to  know  that  the  Bench,  the  most  solemn 
of  all  places  upon  earth,  except  the  Pulpit,  has  been 
pressed  by  so  ignorant  a  knave  as  Wright,  so  loath 
some  a  mass  of  moral  and  physical  depravity  as 
Saunders,  so  bloody-minded  a  villain  as  Scroggs,  so 
hideous  a  devil  as  Jeffreys.  Such  men  passed  away 
with  the  despotisms  that  created  them,  and  there  is 
little  danger  that  their  likes  will  be  seen  again. 
Yet,  under  the  rule  of  upright  judges,  caprice,  or 
some  other  infirmity,  single  among  many  great  virtues 
sometimes  hinders  that  fair  and  equable  dispensation 
of  justice  which  all  good  men  desire.  In  one,  there 
is  that  disposition  before  mentioned,  to  distinguish 
his  administration  by  rulings  which  overturn  past 
rulings  that  are  sufficiently  good  precedents.  In 
another,  there  is  an  overweening  ambition  to  reform 
society  in  impracticable  ways,  as  by  indecent  harsh 
ness  to  defendants  in  criminal  prosecutions,  and  a 
too  speedy  suspicion  of  frauds  in  some  or  other 
sides  in  civil  suits.  'The  only  shade,'  says  Lord 
Campbell,  'in  the  character  of  Chancellor  Osmond 
was  his  great  severity  to  penitents,  which  was  caused 
by  his  own  immaculate  life.'  What  a  commentary 
on  life!  on  the  life  of  even  a  good  man!  Even  Sir 


56  THE    LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

Matthew  Hale,  great  and  good  as  he  was,  was  so 
good  that  he  believed  it  to  be  a  part  of  his  mission 
to  hang  poor  witches,  and,  in  the  nervous  apprehen 
sion  of  being  suspected  of  selling  justice,  sometimes 
hindered  or  delayed  it.  It  seems  almost  to  be  a  re 
quisite  in  a  judge,  (at  least  of  a  Criminal  Court,) 
that  he  have  some  infirmity  for  which  he  desires  and 
needs  forbearance  and  forgiveness.  A  man  who 
leads  what  is  generally  styled  an  'immaculate  life,' 
when  raised  to  the  Bench,  is  often  strangely  apt  to 
regard  his  elevation  as  a  special  and  blessed  inter 
position  of  Providence  for  the  good  of  mankind, 
and  to  seek  for  the  culmination  of  his  fame  by  the 
attempt  of  a  wholesale  clearance  of  vices  as  well  as 
crimes.  In  this  country  it  is  especially  difficult  to 
obtain  able  judges,  because  the  salaries  are  too  small 
to  tempt  the  best  lawyers,  unless  they  be  already 
rich,  or  be  ready  to  retire  from  the  labors  of  the 
profession,  or  they  prefer  the  honors  of  office  to  its 
other  rewards. 

In  the  presence  of  courts  presided  over  by  mag 
istrates  of  so  various  casts,  lawyers,  who  are  as  good 
men  as  the  earth  ever  produced,  are  made  sometimes 
to  appear  at  a  disadvantage  that  is  undeserved. 
The  court  being  the  standard,  both  of  law  and  every 
propriety,  and  having  frequent  occasions  to  overrule 
even  its  best  and  ablest  advocates,  many  men  feel 
surprise  mingled  with  reproach,  that  such  men  should 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  57 

so  often  maintain,  without  blushing,  such  apparent 
wrongs  and  absurdities.  Such  persons,  honest 
themselves,  cannot  understand  how  men,  who 
would  like  to  be  considered  as  honest,  can  appear 
at  the  instance  of  a  mean  or  bad  man  against  the 
charge  of  a  good  one.  But  let  it  be  not  forgotten, 
what  we  have  said  before,  that  every  human  being 
in  society  has  rights,  and  that  they  are  as  sacred  and 
as  dear  in  one  as  in  another.  The  good  man  can 
no  more  take  from  the  bad  what  is  his  due,  than  the 
bad  can  take  from  him.  If  a  poor  knave  have  a 
legal  right  which  a  good  man,  as  does  sometimes 
occur,  cannot  for  many  reasons  recognize,  it  would 
be  a  shame  upon  the  law  if  he  could  not  find  an  advo 
cate  among  the  best  and  bravest  at  the  bar  to  aid 
him  in  its  vindication.  Indeed  it  often  requires  the 
best  and  bravest  to  vindicate  rights  which,  to  good 
men,  seem  sometimes  to  be  so  strangely  located. 
Therefore,  no  rule  could  be  made  that  would  fall 
further  short  of  attaining  a  just  adjudication  of 
causes,  than  the  rule  of  deciding  according  to  the 
relative  standing  of  parties  in  litigation.  As  the 
advocate  cannot  determine  by  such  a  standard,  no 
more  can  the  magistrate.  Let  us  imagine  one  rul 
ing  thus  summarily.  Let  him  open  his  docket  and 
turn  to  a  couple  of  cases.  A  against  B.  By  the 
Court.  '  Let  the  defendant  have  his  verdict,  since 
he  is  a  good  man  and  A  a  bad.'  C  against  D.  By 


58  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

the  Court.  '  In  this  case,  the  plaintiff  must  have 
judgment,  he  being  the  good  man.'  But,  may  it 
please  your  Honor,  who  then  are  good  men?  Alas! 
says  Cicero,  'That  is  a  great  question.'  The  truth  is, 
unhappy  though  it  be  that  all  men  good  and  bad, some 
times  make  mistakes  concerning  the  rights  of  others, 
when  they  seem  to  conflict  with  their  own.  More  un 
happy  yet  it  is,  that  good  men  are  very  often  apt  to 
undervalue  the  rights  of  the  bad.  The  bad  have 
no  friends,  and  they  deserve  to  have  none,  save  in 
the  laws  of  the  land.  These  laws  cover  all.  De 
signed  mostly  to  protect  the  good  from  the  bad, 
they  must  afford  also  a  shelter  to  the  bad  whenever 
they  are  too  rigorously  pursued,  or  whenever  the 
few  rights  which  they  have  not  forfeited,  are  as 
sailed. 

From  all  the  considerations  hereinbefore  men 
tioned,  the  nature  of  municipal  laws  in  general,  and 
the  Common  Law  in  particular,  the  infinite  variable 
ness  of  its  application  to  the  different  circumstances 
of  men's  lives,  the  frequent  impossibility  of  its  as 
certainment  except  by  means  of  public  discussions, 
the  habits  of  some  lawyers,  and  the  characteristics 
of  some  magistrates,  the  large  number  of  shining 
lights  of  the  profession,  among  whom  are  to  be 
found  some  of  the  kindest  and  justest  men,  are  un 
dervalued  by  the  world.  Too  many  of  the  world 
regard  all  lawyers  alike  as  delighting  in  strifes,  as  bar- 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  59 

rators,  disturbers  of  peace,  and  unscrupulously  eager 
for  fame  and  money.  Yet,  how  many  of  these 
greater  lights  are  never  found  in  public  offices  or  in 
the  paths  that  lead  to  them.  How  few  of  them 
accumulate  fortunes.  What  becomes  of  the  great 
fees  which  look  so  like,  what  they  are  sometimes 
styled,  extortions  upon  the  estates  of  men  living 
and  dead?  First,  these  fees  are  neither  so  large  nor 
so  frequent  as  it  is  believed.  Then,  they  go  in  hu 
mane  benefactions,  in  liberal  allowances  to  their 
families,  in  answerings  to  charitable  claims,  in  pur 
chasings  of  books,  and  pictures,  and  objects  of  virtu, 
and  in  other  ways  that  commend  themselves  to  men 
of  generous  minds  and  cultivated  tastes. 

Such  men  as  these  are  the  most  efficient  conserv 
ators  of  social  tranquillity.  Their  profession  affords 
them  the  most  frequent  opportunities,  and  their  hu 
manity  prompts  them  ever,  to  be  such.  Instead  of 
being  the  fomenters  of  useless  litigation,  their  coun 
sel  is  mainly  given  in  discouraging  it.  While  they 
are  ever  ready  to  defend  the  good  against  the  as- 
saults  of  the  bad,  they  are  as  ready  for  that  other 
ungracious  but  necessary  duty,  the  defence  of  the 
bad  against  the  assaults  of  the  good.  And  it  is 
their  crowning  honor  that,  through  their  means,  a 
vaster  amount  of  litigation  is  withheld  from  the 
public  than  is  inflicted  upon  it. 

If  we  could  know  all  that  is  said  and  done  in  the 


60  THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION. 

offices  of  this  class  of  men  during  one  year,  we 
should  be  astonished  to  find  how  much  distress  and 
anguish  have  been  spared  to  private  men,  and  how 
much  expense  and  disgust  have  been  turned  away 
from  the  public.  It  is  impossible  to  calculate  the 
good  that  is  done  by  such  men,  because  it  is  im 
possible  to  know  its  greatest  and  noblest  part.  This 
part,  like  all  the  best  charities,  is  done  in  secret. 
It  is  in  the  secret  chambers  of  offices,  that  selfish 
men  are  warned  from  the  prosecution  of  their  aims. 
It  is  there  that  the  thoughtless  are  admonished  of 
the  laxity  in  business  and  in  conduct  which  is  to  be 
stayed  in  order  to  prevent  pecuniary  and  moral 
ruin.  It  is  there  that  just  and  liberal  settlements 
are  wrung  from  hard  parents  and  mean  husbands. 
It  is  there  that  bad  men,  who  come  to  have  unjust 
testaments  executed,  are  made  ashamed  and  afraid 
to  prolong  their  injustice  beyond  the  grave  and  into 
the  eternal  world.  But  it  is  especially  to  the  up 
right  that  blessings  come  from  these  secret  cham 
bers.  It  is  there  that  they  are  forefended  against 
the  evil  plots  of  the  vicious,  and  that  they  are  aided 
and  guided  in  their  benign  endeavors  for  the  good 
of  others.  It  is  there  that  they  are  comforted  in 
their  anxieties  regarding  the  bestowment  of  the 
fruits  of  their  labors  upon  the  objects  of  their  love 
who  are  to  survive  them.  And  then,  it  is  there, 
sometimes,  that  mirrors  are  held  before  their  eyes, 


THE   LEGAL  PROFESSION.  6 1 

in  which  they  are  made  to  behold  in  their  own 
characters  things  that  surprise  and  pain  them;  yet, 
by  the  sight  of  which,  they  are  made  humbler  and 
better.  This  is,  indeed,  the  true  charity.  To  our 
minds  this  is  the  very  exaltation  of  charity.  The 
great  fees  come  not  from  these  silent  labors.  They 
come  from  those  loud  and  fierce  antagonisms  which 
these  silent  labors  often  prevent,  and  are  intended 
to  prevent.  This  is  the  charity  that  is  kind.  And 
it  is  the  more  beautiful  and  blessed,  in  that  it  doth 
not  behave  itself  unseemly,  but  performs  its  most 
benign  work  unnoticed  by  the  world. 


BELISARIUS. 


TT  is  no  wonder  that  in  the  absence  of  a  better  in- 
*•  spiration,  mankind  should  deify  Fortune  and 
build  temples  to  her  worship.  The  philosopher  and 
the  wit,  while  they  might  smile  at  the  vain  creduli 
ties  of  the  multitude,  must  join  in  the  public  as 
criptions  of  praise  and  the  public  offices  of  sacrifice. 
Horace,  the  gay  and  worldly-minded,  could  have 
his  jest  at  the  splendid  entertainments  of  the  prime 
minister;  but  when  he  came  to  speak  to  the  people 
of  the  Roman  Legions,  and  their  generals  in  distant 
wars,  he  discoursed  in  language  almost  too  solemn 
not  to  be  sincere : — 

'Te  Dacus  asper,  te  profugi  Scythae, 
Urbesque  gentesque,  et  Latin m  ferox, 
Regum  que  matres  barbaronim  et 
Purpurei  metuunt  tyranni.' 

The  unaccountable  vicissitudes  in  human  affairs 
might  well  suggest  to  all  who  believed  that  the  des 
tinies  of  men  were  shaped  or  overruled  by  unseen 
intelligences,  that  among  these  superior  beings 
there  was  one  who  loved  to  confound  the  calcu 
lations  of  the  wise  and  to  be  entertained  by  the 

absurd  displays  of  the  simple. 
62 


BELISARIUS.  63 

Yet  the  temple  at  Antium,  the  oldest  and  most 
magnificent  that  had  been  reared  by  the  Romans  to 
Fortune,  had  received  the  worship  of  many  gener 
ations  before  the  most  devout  worshippers  came  to 
look  among  others  than  those  of  gentle  blood  for 
such  as  the  divinity  might  select  to  become  kings, 
or  consuls,  or  senators.  The  world  has  never  known 
a  state  so  great  as  Rome,  while  her  rulers,  regal  and 
republican,  were  taken  from  those  of  ancient  here 
ditary  rank.  The  real  glory  of  that  celebrated 
ROMAN  PEOPLE  was  achieved  by  the  genius  and 
under  the  rule  of  Patricians.  Conservatism  and 
decency  fled  before  the  vulgarity  of  Marius,  and  a 
despotism  became  necessary  to  avert  the  niin  that 
would  have  ensued  from  the  social  wars  of  such  a 
democracy. 

It  was  not  very  long  after  the  establishment  of 
the  Empire,  that  Fortune  seemed  to  become  more 
strangely  fantastic  than  ever  before.  Whoever  is 
wont  to  be  amused  by  her  caprices,  in  the  abase 
ment  of  the  great  and  the  exaltation  of  the  lowly, 
may  find  abundant  entertainment  in  the  history  of 
the  Roman  Emperors.  What  a  list  of  names  from  Au 
gustus  to  Palaeologus !  How  various  their  deeds  and 
destinies!  From  what  variant  and  distant  origins 
they  came  to  that  throne  which,  though  assailed  for 
fifteen  hundred  years  by  every  hostile  agency,  by 
foreign  wars,  by  divisions,  and  by  transfer  to  one 


64  BELISARIUS. 

and  another  city  in  Europe  and  in  Asia,  was  des 
tined  to  fall  at  last  only  before  the  sword  of  a  suc 
cessor  to  the  camel-driver  of  Mecca!  On  that  long 
roll  of  monarchs  which  began  with  the  decline  of 
its  prestige  and  power,  it  is  curious  to  consider  the 
number  who  sprang  from  ignoble  sources.  Bar 
barians,  not  chiefs,  nor  nobles,  but  barbarians  who 
were  mean,  and  who  were  slaves,  arose  to  divide 
with  the  descendants  of  kings  the  shame  of  destroy 
ing  the  Empire  of  Caesar. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  this  article  to  notice  briefly 
one  of  these  monarchs;  but  only  for  the  sake  of 
considering  the  career  of  a  far  more  interesting 
man  by  whose  unrewarded  services  his  reign, 
otherwise  insignificant  in  its  foreign  policy,  was 
made  illustrious,  and  who  seems  to  have  lived  but 
to  show  how  useless  are  the  labors  of  heroes  to  a 
prince  or  a  people  who  can  neither  appreciate  nor 
employ  them. 

When  Maximin  and  Dioclesian  had  risen  to  the 
throne,  it  needed  no  necromancer  to  persuade  an 
ardent  youth  far  away  among  the  wilds  of  Dacia, 
that  he  might  make  a  high  career  by  joining  the 
armies  of  the  Empire.  How  the  peasant  boy  Jus 
tin  fled  from  his  home  on  the  banks  of  the  Danube, 
how  he  rose  in  favor  with  the  feeble  Anastasius,  how 
by  intrigues  and  murders  he  obtained  the  crown  and 
administered  the  government,  and  how,  at  last,  he 


BELISARIUS.  65 

was  compelled  to  abdicate  in  favor  of  his  nephew, 
Justinian,  who  had  waited  '  long,  too  long  already/ 
we  can  not  here  recite.  We  must  even  pass  over 
the  first  years  of  the  new  reign  in  which  the  wars  in 
the  East  had  accomplished  nothing  except  to  de 
velop  the  fact  that  the  Empire  had  a  general  of 
capacity  great  enough  for  any  achievement  which  a 
wise  monarch  might  desire.  A  provincial,  though 
of  noble  family,  Belisarius  had  left  the  hills  of  Thrace, 
had  risen  step  by  step  in  military  offices  and  held  a 
conspicuous  place  in  the  body-guard  of  Justinian, 
when  the  latter,  in  the  forty-fifth  year  of  his  age, 
put  on  the  Imperial  purple.  In  the  Persian  war, 
which  the  Emperor,  from  various  reasons,  was  in 
duced  to  abandon,  the  Thracian  rose  to  be  unques 
tionably  the  first  general  of  the  Empire.  Added  to 
this  eminent  prestige  was  the  timely  service  which  he 
had  rendered  on  the  occasion  of  the  great  insurrec 
tion  of  the  Nika>  when,  as  Justinian  was  on  the 
very  verge  of  flight  and  ruin,  he  saved  him  by  the 
instantaneous  attack  and  the  terrible  massacre  of  the 
Hippodrome.  The  scandal  of  the  times  assigned 
yet  another  advantage  in  the  beginning  of  his 
career  to  the  ardent  though  inconstant  fondness  of 
the  Empress  for  his  wife,  the  beautiful  Antonina. 
If  this  were  true,  it  was  the  most  praiseworthy  con 
duct  that  the  public  could  ever  find  during  the  long 


66  BELISARIUS. 

lives  of  these  illustrious  females,  whose  beauty  and 
wit  were  the  only  excuses  for  innumerable  frailties. 
And  now  a  richer  field  than  could  be  found  in 
Asia,  lay  extended  and  inviting  to  the  armies  of 
Justinian.  The  imbecility  of  the  later  Emperors, 
the  profligacy  of  ministers  and  the  decline  of 
military  discipline,  had  reduced  the  vast  Roman 
Empire  to  the  space  included  within  the  present 
limits  of  Turkey.  Fifty  years  had  elapsed  since 
the  dismemberment  of  the  West.  In  Italy,  the 
genius  of  Theodoric  had  established  the  supremacy 
of  the  Ostrogoths,  and  the  jealousies  of  Aetius  and 
Boniface,  generals  of  Valentinian  III,  had  enabled 
Genseric,  the  Vandal,  to  secure  for  himself  and 
his  family  the  throne  of  Carthage  and  the  do 
minion  of  Africa.  Vanity,  aimless  ambition,  and 
especially  the  desire  of  more  provinces  to  plunder 
for  -himself  and  his  minister,  the  rapacious  and  pro 
fligate  John  of  Cappadocia,  suggested  to  his  narrow, 
but  cunning  and  persistent  mind,  the  possibility  of 
recovering  some  portion  of  that  splendid  inherit 
ance  which  his  predecessors  had  lost.  Superadded 
to  these  motives  was  another  a  religious  intol 
erance  which  thought  to  pacify  the  Imperial 
conscience  with  the  design  of  exterminating 
by  violence,  the  heresies  of  the  Arians  and  the 
Donatists,  and  restoring  the  Catholic  creed,  which, 
under  the  reign  of  the  barbarian  kings,  had  been 


BELISARIUS.  67 

long  languishing  in  the  West.  Yet  one  more  mo 
tive,  a  great  and  generous  had  it  been  sincere, 
was  the  release  and  restoration  of  Hilderic,  the 
rightful  king  of  Carthage,  who  had  been  dethroned 
and  imprisoned  by  the  crafty  and  cruel  Gelimer. 

A  mind  less  narrow  and  obstinate  would  have 
hesitated  long  before  attempting  a  project  so  full  of 
hazard  as  the  reduction  of  Africa  from  the  power  of 
the  Vandals.  The  obstacles  were  indeed  great. 
The  prestige  of  Roman  arms  had  long  passed  away. 
They  had  been  driven  from  every  province  of  the 
West.  Rome  had  been  entered  and  pillaged  again  and 
again,  and  even  as  the  capital  city  of  the  barbarians 
had  yielded  to  Ravenna  in  the  north.  The  dis 
graceful  failure  to  extend  and  even  to  preserve  the 
ancient  conquests  in  Asia,  had  been  vainly  covered 
by  a  peace  founded  upon  pecuniary  considerations. 
Besides,  this  very  project  had  been  attempted  twice 
before  under  the  lead,  first  of  Boniface  and  after 
wards  of  Basiliscus,  and  the  degenerate  and  oft- 
beaten  armies  that  had  long  lost,  not  only  the  ardor, 
but  the  name  of  legions,  remembered  with  horror  the 
stories  which  they  had  heard  of  the  gigantic  Vandals 
and  the  savage  Moors  whose  multitudes  inhabited 
the  vast  and  fertile  region  lying  north  of  the  African 
Desert.  It  is  easy  to  image  the  universal  shuddering 
which  followed  the  announcement  that  war  was  to 
be  renewed  in  the  West.  The  men  of  property 


68  BELISARIUS. 

dreaded  the  increase  of  taxes  already  too  burthen- 
some  under  that  hated  and  wicked  system,  which 
allowed  army  officers  to  supply  the  rations  of  the 
soldiery,  and  the  paymasters  to  levy  the  taxes  for  its 
maintenance :  the  minister  was  appalled  at  the  pros 
pect  of  the  odium  and  the  disasters  that  must  ensue 
upon  failure  that  seemed  inevitable,  and  the  soldiers, 
yet  fatigued  by  Persian  campaigns,  scarcely  en 
deavored  to  conceal  their  reluctance  to  make  the 
dangerous  navigation  of  the  ^Egean,  Myrtoan, 
Ionian  and  Mediterranean  Seas,  and  encounter,  in 
the  seasons  of  Summer  and  Autumn,  as  well  the 
pestilential  climate,  as  the  warlike  hordes  of  Africa. 
But  Justinian  was  crafty  and  a  bigot.  Through  his 
emissaries  he  had  ascertained  and  exacerbated  the 
spirit  of  rebellion  among  the  various  hostile  factions, 
both  political  and  religious,  in  the  Vandalic  King 
dom.  In  the  midst  of  the  waverings  of  his  mind 
how  far  this  spirit  might  be  trusted,  the  importunate 
appeals  of  the  Athanasian  priesthood,  accompanied 
by  recitals  of  various  preternatural  visions  and 
admonitions,  aroused  yet  more  his  pious  zeal 
and  his  superstitious  fears,  and  the  Imperial 
order  went  forth  stern  and  irrevocable.  One  fact, 
and  one  alone,  could  reconcile  the  nation,  citizens 
and  soldiers,  to  the  expedition.  That  fact  was 
the  appointment  of  Belisarius  to  the  supreme 
command. 


BELISARIUS.  69 

To  one  who,  while  reflecting  upon  the  large  terri- 
ritory  and  the  great  population  that  yet  remained  to 
the  Empire,  may  not  have  considered  the  low  estate 
into  which  its  armies  had  been  reduced  and  the 
means  by  which  the  reduction  had  been  effected,  it 
may  be  surprising  to  be  told  that  the  forces  for  this 
hazardous  undertaking  consisted  of  ten  thousand 
infantry  and  five  thousand  cavalry;  that  of  these 
forces,  the  most  efficient  was  the  cavalry;  and  that, 
at  last,  the  only  fully  sure  reliance  was  the  body 
guard  of  the  commanding  general.  The  heavy 
arms  anciently  borne  by  the  foot-soldier  had  yielded 
to  the  bow  and  quiver;  and  these,  with  the  decline 
of  patriotism  and  military  ardor,  had  rendered  his 
retreat  more  facile  than  his  advance  in  the  face  of 
an  enemy.  It  was  evident  to  all  reasoning  minds 
that  success  required  that  the  leader  should  possess 
as  high  a  degree  of  statesmanship  as  of  military 
genius.  A  discretion  as  unlimited  as  the  power  of 
the  Sovereign  was  granted  to  him,  and,  in  the  last 
days  of  the  month  of  June  in  the  year  533,  after  a 
brief  delay  by  contrary  winds  in  the  passage  of  the 
Propontis,  his  galley  with  its  red  banners  emerged 
from  the  Hellespont  followed  by  the  fleet  of  soldiers 
and  seamen,  who,  though  solemnly  bidding  adieu 
to  friends  and  country,  were  already  beginning  to 
share  the  hopes  and  heroism  of  their  illustrious  gen 
eral.  Safely  and  rapidly  they  passed  along  the  nar- 


70  BE  LI  SARI  US. 

row  passages  between  the  Cyclades  and  Euboea  and 
Attica,  between  Cythera  and  Laconia,  around  the 
promontory  of  T?enarum  to  Methone  in  Messina, 
near  to  the  sandy  Pylos  of  Nestor.  Less  speedy 
but  not  less  safe,  was  the  voyage  up  the  western 
coast  of  Peloponnesus,  by  Zacynthus,  and  thence 
directly  across  the  Ionian  Sea  to  Sicily. 

Fortunate  for  the  Emperor's  hopes  and  that  which 
constituted  their  most  reasonable  foundation,  were 
the  short-sighted  hostilities  of  the  various  nations  of 
barbarians  among  themselves.  But  for  these,  the 
downfall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  West  and  East,  long 
ere  this  period,  would  have  been  effected.  Alive  to 
the  value  of  co-operation,  the  wise  Theodoric  had 
wedded  the  sister  of  Clovis  the  Frank,  and  bestowed 
his  own  sister  Amalafrida  upon  a  Vandal  King.  A 
part  of  the  dowry  of  the  latter  were  the  promontory 
and  the  strong  fortress  of  Lilybreum  on  the  western 
coast  of  Sicily.  The  inhuman  massacre  of  her 
Gothic  attendants,  nobles  and  soldiery,  to  the  num 
ber  of  six  thousand,  and  the  speedy  and  suspicious 
death  of  the  Princess  herself,  aroused  in  this  less 
savage  people  a  hatred  of  the  Vandals  and  a  desire 
of  revenge,  which,  after  the  death  of  Theodoric, 
made  them  commit  the  fatal  mistake  of  encourag 
ing  Justinian  in  his  projects  for  their  conquest.  It 
was  to  learn  how  far  their  promises  in  this  behalf 
might  be  trusted,  that  Beiisarius  had  sailed  to  Sicily, 


BELISARIUS.  71 

and  lingered  in  the  harbor  of  Catana.  His  prompt 
genius  was  quick  to  perceive  that  the  reports  of  their 
sentiments  had  not  been  exaggerated.  Pending  that 
an  army  of  five  thousand  Vandals,  under  the  com 
mand  of  Zano,  the  brother  of  Gelimer,  had  gone  to 
suppress  a  rebellion  in  Sardinia,  and  might  be  re 
called  upon  the  news  of  his  invasion,  he  set  sail  with 
alacrity,  and  as  soon  as  wind  and  oars  could  convey 
him,  reached  and  anchored  at  the  promontory  of 
Caput  Vada  in  Byzacium.  A  council  of  war,  in  ap 
prehension  of  being  cut  off  from  the  ships  on  a  sea- 
coast  destitute  of  harbors,  and  where  the  towns  and 
cities,  in  pursuance  of  the  established  policy  of  the 
Vandals,  had  been  bereft  of  walls  and  fortifications, 
had  dissuaded  from  landing  at  this  point,  and  ad 
vised  the  sailing  to  the  spacious  harbor  that  lay 
unguarded  six  miles  from  Carthage.  Belisarius 
overruled  this  advice.  Celerity  was  of  utmost  im 
portance.  Zano  was  in  Sicily,  and  the  Vandal 
King,  not  expecting  the  invasion  to  be  made  so 
soon,  was  enjoying  the  summer  at  the  city  of 
Hermione.  Besides,  he  was  anxious  to  place  his 
army  to  the  south  of  those  inferior  cities  which,  un 
fortified  by  walls,  could  be  more  speedily  reduced, 
and  being  of  less  resolute  loyalty,  might,  by  adroit 
diplomacy,  be  brought  to  assist,  instead  of  obstruct 
ing,  his  progress  to  the  capital. 

And  now  was  seen    an  invading  army  of  fifteen 


72  BELISARIUS. 

thousand  on  the  sea  shore  of  a  hostile  nation,  whose 
fighting  force  was  scarcely  less  than  one  hundred 
thousand  warriors.  No  other  than  a  hero  could 
contemplate  the  magnitude  of  the  danger  without 
trembling.  Courage  beyond  all  susceptibility  of 
fear,  yet  with  no  element  of  rashness;  prudence 
akin  to  prophetic  inspiration;  caution  that  seemed 
like  timidity,  yet  directing  actions  of  almost  im 
possible  celerity;  military  discipline  that  sometimes 
must  approximate  cruelty,  yet  preserve  the  subor 
dination  and  even  the  love  of  an  army  composed 
of  many  various  elements,  civilised  and  barbarian; 
conciliation  of  an  invaded  people,  but  in  ways  not 
inconsistent  with  the  avowed  purpose  to  overthrow 
their  government  and  established  worship;  all  these, 
and  what  was  yet  more,  the  control  of  eleven  sub 
altern  generals,  all  jealous  of  his  superior  fame,  were 
demanded  of  Belisarius,  and  he  had  them  all  at  his 
command.  The  first  disorders  of  the  fierce  Heruli, 
when  the  fleet  had  just  left  the  harbor  of  Constanti 
nople  and  were  lingering  at  Perinthus,  had  been 
suppressed  by  suspending  the  leading  malefactors 
upon  a  gibbet  in  full  view  of  the  army.  Yet,  when 
many  soldiers  had  died  at  Methone  from  eating  the 
wretched  bread  that  the  avaricious  John  had  supplied, 
the  fatherly  sympathy  and  tenderness  of  the  general, 
and  his  indignant  rebuke  of  the  minister,  more  than 
made  amends.  So  when,  upon  the  landing  in  Africa, 


BELISARIUS.  .  73 

an  orchard  had  been  pillaged,  a  speedy  punishment 
and  an  address  representing  as  well  the  danger  as 
the  injustice  of  such  action,  induced  a  system  of 
regulated  traffic  between  the  army  and  the  citizens, 
which  not  only  gave  the  latter  security  in  their  estates 
but  created  a  market  in  which  they  were  enriched 
by  the  products  of  their  labor.  Belisarius  was  great 
enough  and  virtuous  enough  not  only  to  see,  but  to 
rejoice  in  seeing,  the  justice  and  the  policy  of  pro 
tecting  from  the  violence  of  the  soldiery  the  peaceful 
pursuits  in  an  enemy's,  as  well  as  his  own  country. 
With  him,  not  as  with  most  military  men,  warfare 
had  refined  and  exalted  his  pity  for  human  suf 
fering.  In  the  march  of  his  army  to  the  capital,  not 
only  was  there  not  a  single  outrage  committed  upon 
private  property,  but  the  people  and  the  very  land 
rejoiced  in  the  sense  of  full  protection.  It  is  almost 
incredible  with  what  celerity  the  objects  of  this  ex 
pedition  were  accomplished.  The  statesmanship  of 
Belisarius  made  friends  for  the  Emperor  with  every 
advancing  step.  Sullecte  received  him  with  open 
arms;  then  Leptis;  then  Hadrumetum.  The  hos 
tile  armies  met  ten  miles  to  the  south  of  Carthage. 
Though  surprised  by  the  suddenness  of  the  invasion, 
Gelimer  counted  upon  an  easy  victory  from  the  vast 
superiority  of  his  numbers.  One  column  under  the 
lead  of  his  brother  Ammatas,  whom  he  had  left  in 
command  in  Carthage,  met  the  enemy's  advance; 


74  BELISARIUS. 

another  under  his  nephew  Gibamimd  was  to  assault 
his  left  flank,  while  himself  with  the  heaviest  column, 
in  proper  time  would  fall  upon  his  rear.  But  Gelimer 
saw  that  it  was  not  the  tardy  Basilicus  with  whom 
he  had  to  contend,  but  a  general  who  knew  as  well 
as  Hannibal  or  Caesar,  the  value  of  every  moment 
of  time  in  a  day  of  battle.  Simultaneous  with  the 
death  of  Ammatas  and  the  defeat  of  his  troops  by 
a  desperate  charge  of  cavalry  under  John  the  Arme 
nian,  the  column  of  Gibamund  was  scattered  by  a 
force  of  six  hundred  Huns;  and  while  the  Vandal 
King,  who  even  yet  had  no  expectation  of  defeat 
by  so  inferior  forces,  was  hastily  performing  the 
usual  rites  of  his  brother's  funeral,  Belisarius  turned 
upon  and  overwhelmed  him.  On  the  next  day, 
while,  in  the  anguish  of  grief  and  shame,  he  was 
retreating  into  Numidia,  the  Roman  army  marched 
through  the  open  gates  of  Carthage.  It  was  on  the 
day  of  Cyprian,  the  holy  martyr.  Shouts  and  joyful 
tears  of  Catholics  welcomed  their  deliverers,  the 
high  festival  was  celebrated  in  pious  gladness  by 
those  who  now  foresaw  the  return  of  their  exiled 
bishops  and  grew  ecstatic  in  prospect  of  restoring 
the  creed  of  Athanasius  and  revenging  the  persecu 
tions  of  a  hundred  years.  But  such  was  the  author 
ity  of  Belisarius  that  not  only  was  there  no  spoliation 
of  property,  but  the  business  of  the  citizens  suffered 
no  interruption  except  in  those  hours  in  which  they 


BELISARIUS.  75 

came  forth  to  witness  the  procession  of  the  army 
and  the  solemn  festival  of  the  Church. 

Another  effort  must  be  made  for  the  rescue  of  the 
falling  dynasty.  Zano  returned  with  speed  from 
Sardinia  with  his  forces  flushed  with  recent  conquest; 
great  numbers  of  recruits  were  obtained  among  the 
Moors,  and  Gelimer,  with  an  army  superior  to  the 
former  and  many  times  more  numerous  than  that  of 
his  adversary,  advanced  to  the  last  struggle  for  his 
kingdom.  The  armies  met  on  the  plains  of  Tri- 
cameron,  twenty  miles  west  of  Carthage.  The 
Vandals,  until  the  death  of  Zano,  fought  with  a 
courage  of  which  the  most  desperate  chieftain  could 
find  nothing  to  complain.  But  the  fall  of  this  brave 
and  beloved  prince  filled  his  brother  with  grief  and 
dismay,  and  when  he  saw  the  advancing  standards 
of  Belisarius,  he  fled  from  the  field  with  the  last 
army  he  was  destined  to  lead.  The  victors  rushed 
to  the  pursuit,  joined  by  the  fierce  but  inconstant 
Huns,  (who  had  been  partially  reduced  by  Gelimer 
and  were  awaiting  the  issue  of  battle,)  and  this  vast 
host,  with  their  countless  treasures,  were  slain  or 
captured.  Gelimer,  with  a  few  attendants,  escaped 
to  an  inaccessible  fastness  among  the  Moors,  but 
only,  after  suffering  inconceivable  privations,  to  be 
taken  at  last.  What  a  change  in  six  months !  three 
of  which  had  been  spent  in  reaching  the  scene  of 
conflict.  Within  the  next  three,  the  power  of  the 


76  BELISARIUS. 

Vandals  which  a  hundred  years  had  helped  to  confirm, 
was  destroyed.  As  if  all  things  had  conspired  to 
aid  the  plans  of  Justinian  and  bring  a  success  above 
his  expectations,  and  even  above  his  dreams,  the 
unfortunate  Hilderic  had  been  murdered  by  the 
orders  of  Gelimer,  and  thus  Roman  supremacy  was 
at  once  re-established  over  all  the  country  from  the 
Syrtis  Major  in  the  East  to  the  Balearic  Islands  in 
the  West. 

Such  stupendous  success,  attributable,  so  far  as 
human  calculations  might  extend,  almost  entirely  to 
the  genius  of  one  man,  raised  Belisarius  to  an  equal 
rank  with  the  most  renowned  generals  of  former 
times.  A  monarch  who  had  risen  to  power  by 
means  illegitimate  and  cruel,  and  who  was  perpet 
uating  it  by  administration  inconsistant  with  even  a 
wish  for  the  happiness  of  his  people,  had  not  need 
to  look  elsewhere  but  into  his  own  heart  and  his  own 
experiences,  in  order  to  see,  or  to  believe  that  he 
saw,  the  prospect  of  another,  and  this  time,  a  rea 
sonable  caprice  of  fortune.  This  was  the  exalta 
tion  of  his  Thracian  subject  to  the  kingdom  of 
Carthage,  and  perhaps  by  another  and  not  difficult 
revolution,  to  speedy  succession  to  the  throne  of  the 
Empire.  There  was  much  to  excite  such  an  appre 
hension  in  the  mind  of  such  a  prince.  The  victo 
rious  general,  to  gentle  birth  and  a  noble  person 
added  the  manners  and  mien  of  a  king :  — 


BELISARIUS.  77 

'  His  looks  were  full  of  peaceful  majesty; 
His  head  by  nature  framed  to  wear  a  crown, 
His  hand  to  wield  a  sceptre/ 

Justinian  and  Theodora,  the  Empress,  both  of 
vulgar  extraction,  had  often  heard  with  pain  the  ap 
plause  with  which  he  was  wont  to  be  saluted  by  the 
populace  when  upon  his  walks  from  his  residence  to 
the  public  places  of  the  capital,  and  their  timid 
minds  could  never  be  brought  to  believe  that  he 
could  be  other  than  an  aspirant  for  those  highest  of 
fices,  which  it  seemed  he  had  been  born  to  inherit. 
As  a  part  of  those  imposing  solemnisations,  the 
value  of  which  with  a  conquered  people  he  knew 
how  to  estimate,  he  had  occupied  the  -palace  of 
Gelimer,  and  for  one  day,  before  applying  himself 
to  the  business  of  administration,  listened  to  the 
prayers  of  suppliants  while  seated  upon  the  throne, 
and  held  a  banquet  with  his  officers  in  all  the  state 
of  the  Vandal  kings.  The  secret  reports  of  these 
actions  by  the  subaltern  generals,  who  could  not  en 
dure  to  see  the  star  of  his  fame  rise  so  rapidly,  pro 
duced  in  the  mind  of  Justinian  a  strange  conflict 
between  elation  and  apprehension  at  these  triumphs 
of  his  army.  The  shame  of  appearing  reluctant  to 
honor  the  hero  who  had  already  immortalised  his 
reign,  and  the  indispensable  need  of  the  continuance 
ot  such  a  man  in  the  public  service  for  the  conduct 
of  other  great  undertakings,  so  much  embarrassed 
him  in  the  midst  of  his  fears  and  jealousies,  that  his 


78  BELISARIUS, 

orders  to  the  general  upon  the  question  of  his  re 
maining  in  Africa  were  intentionally  or  unavoidably 
ambiguous. 

Sad  indeed  must  have  been  that  great  soldier  as, 
from  the  superior  heights  to  which  his  genius  had 
exalted  him,  he  looked  down  upon  the  rest  of  man 
kind  and  found,  even  among  those  who  owed  him 
nothing  but  love  and  gratitude,  no  response  to  the 
fidelity  with  which  he  had  devoted  his  life  to  their 
service.  To  an  ordinary  man,  to  any  man  but  Bel- 
isarius,  there  was  a  great  temptation.  Nothing  was 
more  certain  than  that  with  such  a  master,  any  service 
however  great,  must  go  unrewarded,  except  that  he 
could  accomplish  whatever  his  ambition  might 
suggest.  But  not  only  was  he  without  any  un 
lawful  ambition,  but  a  more  cruel  wound  than 
even  the  ingratitude  of  his  prince  could  inflict, 
was  in  that  manly  breast.  Obedient  to  the  first 
and  only  emotion  of  love,  he  had  wedded  Antonina, 
a  charming  widow,  of  whose  many  lovers  he  had 
been  both  too  busy  and  too  pure  to  know,  but 
whose  irregularities  found  a  patroness  and  an 
exemplar  in  the  Empress  herself,  before  she  had 
ascended  from  the  arena  of  the  circus  to  the  bed 
chamber  of  Justinian.  All  men  except  the  husband 
of  Antonina,  knew  of  her  criminal  intimacy  with 
the  youth,  who,  upon  his  happy  conversion  from 
the  heresy  of  the  Eunomians,  just  at  the  beginning 


BELISARIUS.  79 

of  the  expedition  to  Africa,  had  been  adopted  into 
the  general's  family,  as  their  spiritual  son.  Although 
the  chaste  and  pious  husband  could  not  wholly  dis 
trust  the  wife  whom  he  so  singly  loved,  yet  the  bold 
ness  and  fierceness  of  her  unlawful  passion,  which  kept 
the  youth  by  her  side  too  closely  and  constantly  for 
the  credulity  of  the  most  uxorious,  had  raised  a 
doubt;  and  a  doubt  on  such  a  subject  in  the  breast 
of  such  a  man  must  render  him  indifferent  to  what 
ever  might  promise  to  come  from  the  smiles  or  the 
frowns  of  even  the  Emperor  of  the  East.  The  in 
jured  husband,  henceforth  destitute  of  ambition, 
and  unassailable  by  any  other  grief  than  the  one 
that  filled  his  heart,  may  well  be  believed  to  have 
indulged  a  melancholy  smile  when,  to  the  surprise 
of  all  men,  he  embarked  with  his  captives  and  spoils, 
and  led  them  in  the  ceremonials  of  a  triumph,  in 
which,  contrary  to  the  wont  of  former  heroes  who 
rode  in  splendid  chariots,  he  walked  at  the  head  of 
his  guards,  and  laid  all  his  trophies  at  the  feet  of  his 
royal  master  and  his  adulterous  consort.  « Vanity 
of  vanities,'  continually  cried  the  fallen  Gelimer,  as 
the  vast  procession  moved  on  to  the  Hippodrome, 
partly  deriding  and  partly  preaching  on  the  muta 
bility  of  fortune.  He  knew  it  not,  but  he  was  a 
happier  man  than  his  triumphant  captor,  because  he 
was  going  into  retirement  with  his  domestic  honor 
unimpeached. 


8o  BELISARIUS. 

Satisfied  as  much  as  a  timid  monarch  could  be 
with  such  subservient  conduct  of  a  spirit  that  was 
too  great  for  his  comprehension,  and  in  pressing 
need  of  his  genius  in  the  consummation  cf  plans 
which  he  had  cunningly  laid  for  the  recovery  of 
Italy  from  Gothic  and  Arian  rule,  he  graciously  al 
lowed  his  general  a  small  share  of  the  praise  of  his 
glorious  deeds,  and  invested  him  with  the  obsolete 
honors  of  the  Consulship.  With  an  army  of  seven 
thousand  men  he  sent  him  to  Sicily  to  begin  the 
conquest  of  a  nation  whose  military  force  was  two 
hundred  thousand  men,  and  whose  monarch  was  a 
descendant  and  had  inherited  the  spirit  of  Theo- 
doric  and  Merovaeus.  But  that  monarch  was  a  wo 
man.  According  to  the  customs  and  'laws  of  her 
forefathers,  which  forbade  the  sceptre  to  descend  to 
a  female,  being  compelled  to  govern,  first  in  the 
name  of  her  son,  and  after  his  death,  of  a  husband 
whom  for  his  pusillanimity  she  despised,  the  accom 
plished  Amalasontha  became  a  prey  to  the  arts  of 
Justinian,  and  having  been  imprisoned  and  murdered, 
the  feeble  Theodotus  reigned  in  her  stead.  The  di 
visions  created  by  this  family  dispute  lessened  the 
task  which  Belisarius  had  to  perform.  Already  had 
the  promontory  of  Lilybaeum  fallen  to  the  Emperor 
in  right  of  his  conquest  of  the  Vandals,  to  whom, 
as  before  mentioned,  it  had  been  yielded  by  Theo- 
doric.  Scarcely  had  the  rest  of  Sicily  been  reduced, 


BELISARIUS.  8 1 

when  the  presence  of  Belisarius  was  required  in 
Africa.  The  judicious  administration  which,  before 
his  recall,  he  had  inaugurated  in  that  country,  had 
been  abandoned  after  his  departure.  As  if  the 
Vandals  had  been  overthrown  but  to  increase  the 
number  of  Exarchs,  whose  especial  office  seemed  to 
be  the'  spoliation  of  all  classes,  the  people  soon 
groaned  under  heavier  burthens  than  had  ever  be 
fore  been  imposed.  An  insurrection  arose,  to  sup 
press  which  powers  were  required  very  different 
from  those  possessed  by  the  minions  who  knew  only 
how  to  levy  and  extort  taxes.  Belisarius,  arriving 
with  a  few  of  his  body  guard,  soon  hushed  all  mur 
murs,  and  then  returning  to  Sicily,  prepared  for  the 
invasion  of  Italy.  When  all  was  ready,  and  while 
the  crafty  Emperor  was  delaying  Theodotus  in  vain 
negotiations,  Belisarius  precipitated  his  army  into 
Bruttium,  overran  the  whole  southern  coast  where 
Gothic  influence  was  the  weakest,  and  halted  not 
until  he  had  reached  the  centre  of  Campania  and 
stood  jbefore  the  city  of  Naples.  The  command 
ant  of  this  post,  which  was  believed  to  be  impreg 
nable,  viewed  with  composure  the  contemptible 
force  of  five  thousand  men  that  were  encamped  be 
fore  the  walls,  while  he  heard  of  the  preparations  at 
Ravenna  for  concentrating  the  whole  Gothic  forces 
and  marching  to  annihilate  the  army  of  invasion. 
6 


82  BELISARIUS. 

Fortune  favored  the  besiegers.  An  old  and  forsaken 
aqueduct  was  discovered  and  found  to  extend  far 
into  the  city.  The  humane  general,  foreseeing  the 
havoc  that  must  follow  from  the  sudden  irruption  in 
the  deep  of  night,  of  an  army  hungry  and  infuriate,  for 
bore  to  resort  to  it  until  he  had  warned  the  Nea 
politans  in  terms  which  risked  the  discovery  of  his 
plans.  They  gave  no  heed  to  his  warnings,  and  felt 
only  the  more  secure  until  the  advancing  trumpets 
of  a  band  of  four  hundred  who  had  entered  through 
this  hazardous  passage,  announced  to  their  comrades 
without  and  the  terrified  garrison  and  citizens  within, 
that  Naples  had  fallen.  All  that  a  great  and  humane 
general  could  do  in  the  darkness  to  mitigate  the 
outrages  which  could  not  but  ensue,  was  done.  By 
nis  entreaties  and  threats,  the  carnage  was  checked 
at  last,  and  the  city  was  reconciled  to  its  destiny. 

Meanwhile  the  impotent  Theodotus,  who  had  been 
listening  to  vague  promises  from  Constantinople  and 
was  intent  upon  plans  for  securing  his  own  personal 
safety  and  aggrandisement,  was  grossly  neglecting 
the  public  defence.  The  Goths,  mourning  for  the 
murdered  queen,  and  indignant  against  his  pusillan 
imity,  were  hesitating  whether  or  not  they  would 
drag  him  from  his  throne  and  elevate  the  valiant 
Vitiges  in  his  stead.  They  were  not  long  in  decid 
ing;  and  while  this  tragic  expedient  was  being 
adopted  and  the  nation  was  occupied  in  the  solemn 


BELISARIUS.  83 

inauguration  of  the  new  sovereign,  the  Catholic 
garrison  of  Rome  voluntarily  evacuated  the  city, 
and  Roman  rule  was  once  more  established  on  the 
Tiber.  There  is  nothing  in  the  history  of  sieges 
which  exhibits  a  greater  degree  of  courage,  skill, 
patience,  and  humanity,  than  were  displayed  by 
Belisarius  in  the  defence  of  this  immense  city, 
against  the  attacks  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
Goths,  throughout  all  the  perils  and  sufferings  of 
twelve  months  of  beleaguerment.  How  he  availed 
himself  of  the  interval  of  the  new  inauguration  and 
the  mustering  of  the  Gothic  troops,  in  gathering 
stores  of  corn  from  Sicily,  and  from  the  adjoining 
districts  in  Italy;  how  he  succeeded  with  a  few 
Moorish  cavalry  in  keeping  always  open  a  pass  to 
and  from  the  province  of  Campania;  how  he  made 
available  the  waters  of  the  Tiber,  when  all  the  aque 
ducts  were  obstructed,  and  its  stream  was  choked 
and  polluted  by  the  bodies  of  the  dead;  how,  when 
the  supplies  of  food  and  drink  were  nearly  exhausted, 
he  removed  the  non-combatant  population  to  places 
of  safety  without  the  city;  how  he  pitied  the  suffer 
ings  and  suppressed  the  plots  of  a  dismayed  and 
coward  people;  how  he  repulsed  the  combined  and 
several  assaults  of  that  vast  and  mighty  host  with 
skill  that  has  no  superior,  if  it  have  an  equal,  in  all 
ancient  or  modern  warfare ;  and  how,  after  a  siege 
of  twelve  months,  when  fifty  thousand  of  the  enemy 


84  BELISARIUS. 

had  perished,  and  the  disheartened  monarch,  with 
forces  yet  twenty  times  greater  than  his  own,  aban 
doned  the  siege  in  dispair;  all  these  are  to  be  found 
in  the  histories  of  his  times.  These  histories  relate 
further,  that  in  the  midst  of  the  labors  of  his  de 
fense,  his  fertile  genius  invented  the  means  to  hasten 
the  retreat  of  Vitiges  by  inflaming  the  spirit  of  re 
volt  in  Liguria,  and  by  a  masterly  employment  of  the 
reinforcements  which,  after  long  delays,  had  been 
sent  from  Constantinople.  In  the  interval  of  a  truce 
which  had  been  artfully  managed  for  the  sake  of 
delay  until  these  forces  could  arrive  on  the  opposite 
shore  of  Italy,  the  Goths,  who  themselves  were 
watching  every  opportunity  to  violate  it,  were  con 
founded  by  the  intelligence  that  an  army,  under 
John  the  Sanguinary,  with  such  instructions  as 
only  Belisarius  knew  how  to  frame,  was  in  Picenum, 
where  were  their  wives  and  children,  and  richest 
treasures.  Raising  the  siege  of  Rome,  they  has 
tened  to  the  attack  of  Rimini,  into  which  John  had 
retired  at  their  approach.  But  such  was  the  celerity 
of  Belisarius  in  effecting  a  junction  with  Narses, 
who  had  been  sent  with  an  additional  force  to 
Picenum,  that  Vitiges  again  retreated  and  shut 
himself  behind  his  last  stronghold,  the  fortress  and 
morasses  of  Ravenna. 

Jealousies  and  suspicions  were  already  risen  again 
in  the  mind  of  the  Emperor,  and  a  man  was  found 


BELISARIUS.  85 

who,  with  some  show  of  reason,  might  divide  with 
Belisarius  the  glory  of  great  achievements.  To  the 
invidiousness  and  cunning  ambition  of  his  class, 
Narses  the  Etmach  united  high  military  genius.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  say  what  Justinian  might  not 
have  accomplished  by  a  cordial  co-operation  of 
these  two  generals.  But  co-operation  was  imprac 
ticable  between  two  such  uncongenial  spirits.  The 
slyness  and  the  mean  sycophancy  of  the  one  were 
in  too  constant  contrast  with  the  open  manliness  of 
the  other.  But  the  very  qualities  which  rendered 
him  contemptible  in  the  eyes  of  such  a  man  as 
Belisarius,  endeared  him  the  more  to  Justinian. 
The  hero  ascertained  that  the  Eunuch  had  come  to 
watch  his  movements,  and  to  prevent  his  too  great 
success.  No  sooner  were  the  Goths  humbled  and 
their  power  in  the  South  destroyed,  and  when 
with  the  forces  in  Italy,  now  raised  to  twenty  thous 
and  men,  their  dominion  might  have  been  annihil 
ated,  Narses,  true  to  his  instincts  and  the  equally 
unworthy  innuendoes  of  his  master,  withdrew  his 
command.  These,  with  accessions  of  the  discon 
tented  and  insubordinate  of  the  regular  army, 
amounted  to  ten  thousand  men;  and  Belisarius  was 
left  with  a  force  barely  enough  to  preserve  the  con 
quests  he  had  made,  and  without  the  power  to  com 
plete  them.  While  Narses  went  upon  a  useless 
expedition  into  the  ^Emilian  province,  and  Beli- 


86  BELISARIUS. 

sari  us  was  employed  in  reducing  some  inferior 
towns,  many  months  of  precious  time  elapsed.  In 
this  interval  a  new  enemy  came  into  the  field.  It 
must  have  been  with  irrepressible  indignation  that 
the  great  general,  in  full  view  of  what  might  have 
been  but  for  the  silly  fears  of  the  Emperor  and  the 
petty  meanness  of  his  favorite,  heard  descending 
from  the  Alps  that  avalanche  of  fresh  barbarians 
under  Theodebert  the  Frank.  It  is  yet  mournful 
to  contemplate  that  terrific  invasion  in  which  Milan, 
the  second  city  in  Europe,  was  destroyed,  three 
hundred  thousand  of  its  inhabitants  were  mas 
sacred,  and  all  Liguria  was  laid  waste.  But  he  was 
the  most  patient  of  mankind.  Seizing  the  oppor 
tunity  when  the  Franks,  satiated  with  blood  and 
desolation,  and  now  attacked  by  famine  and  an 
epidemical  disease,  were  discontented  and  mur 
muring,  his  powers  of  diplomacy  obtained  that 
which  no  military  genius  without  an  army  could 
enforce,  and  Theodebert  led  his  hordes  away. 

Of  all  the  actions  of  Belisarius,  the  grandest  and 
the  bravest,  the  crowning  of  his  many  glories,  was 
his  conduct  in  the  capture  of  Ravenna  and  the 
closing  of  the  war  in  Italy.  Narses,  as  if  it  were 
supposed  that  he  had  sufficiently  hindered  the  ca 
reer  of  the  general-in-chief,  had  now  been  recalled 
to  his  old  place  in  the  intrigues  of  the  court,  and 
the  forces  were  again  reunited  under  one  command. 


BELISARIUS.  87 

Ravenna,  from  its  inaccessibility  in  the  midst  of  its 
morasses,  was  considered  impregnable  by  any  force 
or  artifice.  While  the  mind  of  Belisarius  was  medi 
tating  upon  the  means  for  its  reduction,  and  when 
he  had  completely  invested  it  by  sea  and  land,  he 
was  astounded  by  the  arrival  of  messengers  with  a 
treaty  of  peace  signed  by  the  Emperor,  which  al 
lowed  the  Goths  to  retain  all  their  possessions  to 
the  north  of  the  Po !  One  can  easily  perceive  in 
this  treaty  the  hand  of  the  Eunuch,  whose  mean 
but  limitless  ambition  had  cast  out  every  generous 
as  well  as  every  patriotic  emotion.  A  general  less 
brave,  a  citizen  less  patriotic,  a  subject  less  loyal, 
would  not  have  opposed  a  policy  which  the  sover 
eign  had  adopted  and  which  might  be  approved  by 
the  judgments  of  every  other  adviser,  military  and 
civil,  in  the  Empire.  But  Belisarius,  contrary  to  the 
opinion  of  all  his  generals  who  unanimously  voted 
that  Ravenna  could  not  be  reduced,  refused  to  con 
sider  the  treaty  and  thus  lose  the  opportunity  of 
signalising  his  desire  for  the  good  of  his  country 
and  the  glory  of  his  sovereign.  The  Goths  were  in 
dismay  at  this  unexpected  resolution.  Yet  in  their 
boundless  admiration  for  the  hero,  who,  in  spite  of 
hindrances,  had  achieved  such  successes,  and  with 
that  strange  ardor  of  the  mind  when  from  one  fond 
hope  which  it  has  been  forced  to  abandon,  it  turns 
to  a  new  one  sometimes  inconsistent  and  even  hos- 


88  BELISARIUS. 

tile  to  the  former,  they  gave  up  to  him  their  last 
fortress,  and  with  tears  besought  that  he  would  allow 
them  to  be  the  voluntary  soldiers  of  him — BELISAR 
IUS,  KING  OF  ITALY.  Ravenna  was  occupied;  the 
crown  was  refused;  and  the  vanquished  Goths,  in 
their  inability  to  understand,  believed  that  they 
despised  a  man,  who,  gifted  with  the  very  highest 
talents,  and  with  adequate  inducements  and  perfect 
opportunities,  had  neither  ambition  nor  resentment. 
Even  Justinian  could  not  withhold  the  praise  that 
was  due  to  such  matchless  magnanimity.  But  his 
newly  awakened  apprehensions  must  be  relieved 
again  by  the  presence  and  renewed  submission  of 
his  greatest  subject.  The  order  for  his  return  was 
instantly  obeyed,  the  Emperor  was  soothed,  and 
Italy,  as  Africa  had  been,  was  delivered  over  to  the 
rapacity  of  the  Exarchs. 

The  avowed  motive  for  the  recall  of  Belisarius  was 
the  necessity  of  making  a  more  vigorous  resistance 
than  had  yet  been  interposed  to  the  incursions  of 
Nushirvan,  the  Shah  of  Persia.  The  avowal  was 
mainly  false.  Yet  the  emergency  was  greater  than 
Justinian  believed.  False  to  the  stipulations  of  the 
peace  which  had  been  solemnly  styled  the  Eternal, 
the  Emperor  had  attempted  to  seduce  one  of  the 
dependencies  of  Nushirvan  and  to  incite  the 
Northern  barbarians  to  invade  his  dominions. 
The  latter  resented  this  perfidy  by  an  inroad  into 


EELISARIUS.  89 

the  Asiatic  provinces  of  the  Empire,  and,  among, 
other  acts  of  devastation,  the  destruction  of  Antioch, 
the  most  important  city  east  of  the  Bosporus.  The 
incapacity  of  the  Roman  generals  in  the  East  had 
emboldened  him  in  another  campaign  to  attempt  the 
occupation  of  Colchis,  which  the  wicked  and  foolish 
exactions  of  the  Emperor  had  alienated  from  his 
alliance.  If  this  project  had  succeeded,  the  Eux- 
ine  would  have  been  opened,  and  the  Persians,  with 
a  strong  naval  armament,  could  have  sailed  into  the 
harbor  of  Constantinople.  After  a  delay  of  many 
months  in  the  capital,  Belisarius  was  sent  to  take 
command  of  the  forces  in  Asia.  In  spite  of  their 
great  decline  both  in  numbers  and  discipline,  in 
spite  of  the  insubordination  of  two  of  his  generals, 
and  the  treason  and  desertion  of  a  third,  he  man 
aged,  by  an  adroit  movement  across  the  Tigris,  to 
divert  Nushirvan  from  the  occupation  of  Colchis  at 
the  very  moment  of  its  consummation,  and  thus 
bring  an  end  to  what  was  called  the  Lazic  war. 

Ashamed  at  having  been  thwarted  in  so  important 
a  project  by  the  superior  generalship  of  Belisarius, 
Nushirvan,  in  the  following  spring,  (A.  D.  542,) 
again  sallied  forth  with  the  largest  army  which  he 
had  yet  brought  into  the  field  against  the  Romans. 
This  time  his  lust  for  rapine  and  his  pious  zeal  in 
duced  him  to  attempt  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem, 
which  was  yet  exceedingly  rich  in  holy  offerings. 


90  BELISARIUS. 

The  Imperial  forces  were  then  under  the  command 
of  Buzes  and  Justus,  a  nephew  of  the  Emperor. 
Upon  being  again  despatched  to  the  East,  Belisarius 
found  the  army  at  Hierapolis,  and  both  they  and 
their  leaders  were  in  consternation  at  the  immense 
numbers  and  the  rapid  operations  of  the  Persians, 
and  they  were  unanimously  in  favor  of  remaining 
within  that  stronghold  until  Nushirvan,  satisfied  with 
plunder,  might  voluntarily  return.  '  Such  conduct', 
answered  the  general,  *  would  not  deserve  the  mere 
name  of  timidity — it  would  be  treason.'  He  at 
once  issued  his  orders  and  marched  the  army  to  Euro- 
pus  on  the  Euphrates,  a  position  which  would  enable 
him  to  prevent  all  communication  between  the  king 
and  his  dominions.  This  movement,  such  was  its 
prodigious  boldness,  was  interpreted  as  a  manoeuvre 
to  intercept  his  retreat.  The  astonished  invader, 
believing  himself  to  have  been  misinformed  as  to 
the  strength  of  his  enemy,  again  retreated  quickly, 
availed  himself  of  what  was  supposed  to  be  an  oversight 
of  Belisarius  in  leaving  unguarded  one  of  the  passes, 
and  solaced  himself  with  the  vain  conceit  that  he 
had  for  once  outwitted  his  adversary.  These  vic 
tories,  though  bloodless,  must  be  ranked  among 
the  best  exploits  of  military  genius. 

By  this  time  the  rule  of  the  Exarchs  in  the  West 
had  exhausted  all  the  fruits  of  conquest.  Never 
was  a  policy  more  unlikely  to  secure  the  desirable 


BELISARIUS.  91 

results  of  victory  than  that  adopted  by  the  ministers 
of  Justinian  in  Africa  and  Italy.  We  may  lament, 
and  it  is  well  we  should  lament,  the  sufferings  pro 
duced  by  an  army  of  invasion.  An  infuriate  soldier 
who  wars  for  pay  and  booty,  is  an  object  of  just  ab 
horrence.  But  even  he  is  less  to  be  dreaded  than 
those  officials  taken  from  the  ranks  of  the  cowards 
who  remain  at  home  until  the  war  is  over,  and  then 
come  to  the  field  of  conquest,  and  slowly,  and  de 
liberately,  and  pitilessly,  extort,  not  only  the  last 
savings  that  remain  to  the  vanquished,  but  the 
yearly  returns  of  their  hopeless  toil.  The  policy 
of  the  Exarchs  seemed  but  to  contemplate  two 
ends — the  extirpation  of  heresy  and  the  plunder  of 
all  men.  The  Arians  were  hindered  even  in  the 
private  baptism  of  their  children,  and  the  most  uri- 
doubted  loyalty  and  the  most  unexceptionable  re 
ligious  faith  of  a  Roman  could  not  shield  him  from 
open  spoliation  by  the  civil  officers.  Deliverance 
from  such  exactions  was  indeed  hopeless,  since  they 
were  countenanced  by  the  Emperor  himself,  who 
could  never  gather  money  enough  for  his  two  only 
purposes  for  its  employment, — the  enriching  of  his 
queen  and  favorites,  and  the  erection  of  costly 
buildings.  .  These  cruelties  produced  rebellions 
among  the  Moors  and  the  few  remaining  Vandals 
in  Africa  that  resulted  in  slaughters  and  desolations 
from  which  thirteen  centuries  have  not  been  able  to 


92  BELISARIUS. 

rescue  that  once  prosperous  country,  and  at  the 
mere  description  of  which  even  now  the  mind  is 
appalled.  In  Italy,  the  rule  of  these  viceroys  was 
so  different  from  the  tolerant  and  benign  administra 
tion  of  Theodoric,  that  when  Totila,  a  brave  Goth, 
essayed  the  deliverance  of  the  remnant  of  his  peo 
ple  from  their  oppression,  he  found  friends  and  allies 
among  all  classes  of  citizens,  rich  and  poor,  Arians 
and  Catholics,  from  the  Alps  to  the  Gulf  of  Tar- 
entum.  No  doubt  the  surprise  and  chagrin  of  the 
Emperor  were  as  great  as  they  were  avowed  to  be, 
when  his  deaf  ears  heard  at  last  that  the  exactions 
which  he  had  sanctioned. and  encouraged  had  filled 
all  Italy  with  horror  and  hatred,  and  that  Totila, 
with  a  large  army  of  Goths  and  Italians,  had  marched 
unmolested  from  Padua  to  Naples,  had  captured  the 
latter  and  was  preparing  for  another  siege  of  Rome. 

Who  but  Belisarius  could  be  found  to  cope  with 
the  exigencies  of  this  crisis?  And  yet,  we  can 
scarcely  credit  the  recorded  truth  that  the  material 
support  by  which  this  new  expedition  was  to  be  sus 
tained,  was  less  than  it  was  in  the  preceding.  But 
the  maladministration  of  the  Imperial  war  depart 
ment  had  reached  a  point  hardly  paralleled  in  his 
tory.  His  rapacious  and  unprincipled  ministers, 
being  both  tax-assessors  and  paymasters,  not  only 
plundered  throughout  the  Empire  for  the  avowed 
support  of  the  army,  but  withheld  from  the  latter 


BELISARIUS.  93 

their  bounties,  and  even  encouraged  the  reduction 
of  the  rolls  by  desertions  and  furloughs  in  order 
to  pocket  the  surplus  supplies  which  this  reduc 
tion  created.  Belisarius,  in  order  to  prevent 
the  recurrence  of  the  apprehension  which 
his  previous  conduct  with  the  Goths  had  inspired, 
was  deprived  of  his  own  guards.  Arriving  at  Ra 
venna  with  a  handful  of  men,  less  than  four  thousand 
recruits,  whom  he  had  gathered  in  Illyricum,  and 
seeing  at  once  the  impossibility  of  increasing  his 
force  either  by  forced  levies  or  by  voluntary  enlist 
ment  in  a  country  which  had  grown  to  prefer  Gothic 
to  Roman  domination,  he  remonstrated  in  terms 
that  discovered  a  sadness  such  as  can  be  felt  only 
by  great  minds  which,  like  Cassandra,  have  the  un 
happy  gift  to  foretell  calamities  which  are  fated  not 
to  be  believed  by  those  who  alone  have  the  power 
to  prevent  them.  After  long  delays,  and  not  until 
he  had  been  driven  to  recross  the  Adriatic  to  Dyrr- 
achium,  he  received  a  small  additional  reinforce 
ment.  With  a  force  so  inadequate,  Narses,  as  was 
afterwards  shown,  would  have  refused  at  all  hazards 
the  conduct  of  the  expedition.  Belisarius  embarked 
with  it,  and  fearing  the  attempt  to  pass  through  the 
country,  coasted  around  the  Peninsula  and  landed 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Tiber. 

Impossible  as  it  seemed,  with  such  a  force,  to  re 
lieve  Rome  from  the  assault  of  a  numerous  host  led 


94  BELISARIUS. 

by  an  able  general  who  had  spent  many  months  in 
obstructing  the  channel  of  the  river  and  guarding 
its  banks,  the  relief  was  once  on  the  very  verge  of 
being,  and  would  have  been,  accomplished,  but  for 
the  baseness  of  Bessus,  the  commandant,  and  the 
disobedience  of  one  of  his  subalterns.  During  the 
time  when  the  general  was  confined  by  illness  in 
his  camp,  the  city  was  betrayed  by  the  sentinels 
who  guarded  the  Asinarian  gate.  Thus  Rome  once 
again  fell  to  the  possession  ot  the  Goths.  And  this 
had  been  the  last  day  of  the  city  which  for  ages  had 
been  boasting  the  name  of  the  Eternal,  but  for  the 
solemn  appeal  of  Belisarius,  who,  in  the  name  of  all 
mankind,  the  dead,  the  living,  and  the  yet  unborn, 
besought  him  to  spare  the  remains  of  those  mighty 
monuments  of  the  genius  and  glory  of  the  past. 
The  letter  conveying  this  appeal  is  so  replete  with 
eloquent  and  pathetic  warning  that  we  quote  it 
entire : 

'  The  most  mighty  heroes  and  the  wisest  statesmen  have  always 
considered  it  their  pride  to  own  a  city  with  newly  and  stately  build 
ings,  while  on  the  other  hand  to  destroy  those  which  already  exist, 
has  been  reserved  for  the  dull  ferocity  of  savages  careless  of  the 
sentence  which  posterity  will  cast  upon  them.  Of  all  the  cities 
which  the  sun  beholds  in  his  course,  none  can  vie  with  Rome  in  size, 
splendor  and  renown.  It  has  not  been  reared  by  the  genius  of  one 
man,  by  the  labor  of  a  single  age.  The  august  assembly  of  the  re 
publican  Senate,  and  the  long  train  of  magnificent  Emperors,  by  the 
progressive  and  accumulated  toil  of  centuries,  and  by  the  most  lavish 
expenditure  of  wealth,  have  brought  this  capital  to  its  present  high 
and  acknowledged  pre-eminence.  Every  foreign  country  has  fur 
nished  architects  for  its  construction,  artists  for  its  ornament;  and 


BELISARIUS.  95 

the  slow  results  of  their  joint  exertions  have  bequeathed  to  us  the 
noblest  monument  of  ancient  glory.  A  blow  aimed  at  this  venerable 
fabric  will  resound  equally  through  past  and  future  ages.  It  will 
rob  the  illustrious  dead  of  the  trophies  of  their  fame;  it  will  rob  un 
born  generations  of  the  proud  and  cheering  prospect  which  these 
trophies  would  afford  them.  Consider  also  that  one  of  the  two 
events  must  needs  occui.  You  will  in  this  war  obtain  a  final 
victory  over  the  Imperial  forces,  or  yourself  be  subdued.  Should  your 
cause  prevail,  you,  by  the  havoc  which  you  meditate,  would  over 
throw  not  a  hostile  city  but  your  own;  while  your  present  forbear 
ance  would  preserve  for  you  the  first  and  fairest  possession  of  your 
crown.  If,  on  the  contrary,  fortune  should  declare  against  you,  your 
mercy  to  Rome  will  be  rewarded  by  the  mercy  of  the  conqueror  to 
you;  but  none  could  be  expected  from  Justinian  after  the  desolation 
of  his  ancient  capital.  What  benefit,  therefore,  in  an}'  case,  can 
accrue  to  you  from  so  barbarous  an  outrage?  All  mankind  have 
now  their  eyes  turned  towards  you.  Your  fame  is  in  the  balance, 
and  will  incline  to  one  scale  or  the  other,  according  to  your  conduct 
on  this  decisive  occasion;  for  such  as  are  the  deeds  of  princes,  such 
will  be  their  character  in  history.' 

Totila  perused  this  letter  many  times,  and  his 
gloomy  mind  brooded,  and  yearned,  and  hesitated 
over  the  demolition  of  the  city  that  had  nurtured  and 
given  its  name  to  the  worst  enemies  of  his  people. 
This  was,  at  least,  perhaps  the  noblest  of  all  the 
achievements  of  that  hero  of  so  many  wars,  when, 
in  the  absence  of  other  means  of  prevention,  he 
pleaded  in  so  touching  and  solemn  language  for  these 
sacred  trophies,  the  common  property  of  all  genera 
tions  of  mankind,  that  the  barbarian,  partly  in  pity, 
and  partly  in  awe,  forbore  to  strike. 

In  tracing  the  further  conduct  of  Belisarius  in  this 
Italian  war,  and  in  comparing  the  support  which  he 
received  from  Constantinople  with  that  which  after- 


96  BELISARIUS. 

wards  was  rendered  to  Narses,  one  is  almost  led  to 
doubt  whether  the  Emperor  did  not  desire  the  hu 
miliation  of  his  General,  rather  than  the  triumph  of 
his  arms.  It  is  impossible  by  any  other  supposition 
inconsistent  with  the  absence  of  all  military  or  po 
litical  sagacity,  to  account  for  his  treatment.  To- 
tila,  having  exiled  the  citizens,  and  imprisoned  the 
Senate,  stationed  a  large  force  at  Mt.  Algidus  in 
order  to  watch  and  threaten  his  adversary  who  was 
at  Porto.  While  he  was  gone  with  the  rest  of  his 
army  to  reduce  the  remaining  Imperial  forces  in  the 
south,  nothing  could  have  astounded  him  more  than 
to  hear  that  Belisarius,  by  a  grand  and  sudden  at 
tack,  had  overcome  the  army  left  for  its  guard,  had 
recaptured  Rome,  had  removed  all  his  stores  from 
Porto,  and  was  preparing  to  stand  a  siege.  The 
furious  Goth  returned,  reunited  all  his  forces,  and 
the  defense  of  the  former  war  was  re-enacted  by  the 
heroic  general.  The  repeated  assaults  of  the  Goths 
were  repulsed  with  horrible  slaughter.  After  the 
loss  of  the  flower  of  their  army,  they  again  raised 
the  seige  and  retired  to  Tivoli.  At  this  juncture 
the  war  could  have  been  ended  if  any  other  than 
Justinian  had  been  at  the  head  of  the  government. 
While  Belisarius  urged  with  all  his  zeal  the  dispatch 
of  re-enforcements  which  would  have  enabled  him  to 
speedily  crush  the  Gothic  power,  the  Emperor,  hav 
ing  been  seized  by  a  new  ambition,  was  then  en. 


BELISARIUS.  97 

gaged  in  writing  a  controversial  treatise  upon  the 
ology,  and  did  not  even  deign  to  notice  his  en 
treaties.  And  when  they  came  at  last,  he  was 
ordered  with  the  forces  he  could  safely  withdraw 
from  Rome  (and  these  were  less  than  a  thousand 
men)  to  repair  to  Apulia,  where  he  was  destined  to 
lose  much  of  the  prestige  of  his  previous  victories 
by  the  uselessness  of  this  expedition  and  the  in 
efficiency  and  cowardice  of  his  generals.  Several 
campaigns  followed,  in  which  nothing  decisive  was 
done  by  either  the  Imperial  or  Gothic  forces. 

It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  position  more  dis 
agreeable  than  that  of  a  great  commander,  when,  in 
full  assurance  of  complete  success  to  the  unmolested 
operation  of  his  plans,  he  is  continually  thwarted  by 
orders  from  an  incompetent  government.  It  can 
but  exasperate  the  pain  in  such  a  case  when  he  feels 
that  such  orders  are  dictated,  not  less  by  ignorance, 
than  by  malignity  and  fear.  The  true  patriot  thus 
recognizes  in  himself  the  most  dangerous  citizen  of 
his  country  and  the  chief  cause  of  its  disasters. 
Such  was  the  position  of  Belisarius  during  all  these 
fruitless  campaigns.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life 
he  asked  to  be  recalled,  and  his  petition  was  grant 
ed.  He  had  accomplished  in  his  long  career  full 
enough  for  the  measure  of  a  greater  ambition.  No 
man  with  similar  resources  and  hindrances  had  ever 
accomplished  nearly  so  much.  He  despaired  of 

7 


98  BELISARIUS. 

being  able  to  exert  sufficient  influence  with  the 
Emperor  to  obtain  the  means  of  doing  more  for  his 
country.  He  was  growing  old.  And  now  weary 
from  many  a  toil  which  had  been  paid  with  nothing 
but  ingratitude,  suspicion,  and  persecution,  having 
long  borne  the  heaviest  burthen  that  can  ever  weigh 
upon  a  proud  and  sensitive  spirit,  the  consciousness 
or  the  suspicion  of  domestic  dishonor,  Belisarius 
desired  to  return  home,  where  he  might  wait  for 
death,  and,  according  to  his  faith,  make  preparation 
for  a  higher  life. 

The  neglect  that  ensued  was  doubtless  not  unac 
ceptable  to  a  man  who,  in  his  tread  through  'all  the 
ways  of  honor/  had  seen  full  well  the  vanity  of  de 
pending  upon  princes'  favors,  and  mingling  among 
the  attendants  of  courts.  Yet  we  can  scarcely  be 
lieve  that  he  suppressed  a  pardonable  emotion  of 
triumph  when,  after  some  years  of  solitude,  upon  a 
sudden  incursion  of  the  Bulgarians,  which  threatened 
the  seizure  of  the  capital,  the  terrified  monarch  and 
his  court  turned  to  him  once  more  for  protection. 
Once  more  the  aged  general  clothed  himself  in  ar 
mor,  and  with  fearfully  unequal  forces  went  forth  to 
his  last  battle  and  won  his  last  victory.  Perhaps 
that  emotion  fluttered  into  increased  warmth  and 
brightness,  when,  upon  his  return  and  the  passing 
of  the  danger,  the  Emperor,  hardened  in  ingratitude, 
followed  by  his  servile  ministers,  coldly  turned  from 


BELISARIUS.  99 

their  deliverer,  and  dismissed  him  to  the  retirement 
from  which  their  fears  had  called  him. 

But  for  the  names  of  Belisarius  and  Tribonian, 
the  reign  of  Justinian  would  have  been  as  inglorious 
as  those  of  most  of  the  sovereigns  who  ruled  during 
the  years  of  the  decline  of  the  Empire.  His  name 
has  been  and  must  ever  be,  associated  with  that 
grand  system  of  Civil  Law  which  the  wise  and  just 
men  of  former  times  had  created,  and  which  Tri 
bonian  by  hi  s  orders  compiled.  In  thus  undeservedly 
usurping  the  renown  of  others,  his  name  has  a  par 
allel  in  that  of  James  the  First  in  the  Translation 
of  the  Bible — a  singular  coincidence  in  the  lives  of 
two  men,  who,  though  living  in  widely  distant  ages, 
were  exceedingly  alike  in  many  of  those  character 
istics  which  render  a  man  unfit  for  the  government 
of  a  great  people.  There  was  in  the  one  as  in  the 
other  the  same  religious  fervor  which,  instead  of 
being  illustrated  in  the  leading  of  pious  lives  and 
the  production  of  good  works,  was  expended  in  the 
composition  of  petty  doctrinal  tracts  and  the  per 
secution  of  their  opponents.  They  had  the  same 
childish  fondness  for  power,  and  in  their  ignorance 
how  to  employ  it,  were  plagued  with  the  same  ner 
vous  apprehension  of  its  loss  or  diminution.  Both 
were  fond  of  notoriety  and  lacked  the  ability  to  ob 
tain  any  just  renown.  Both  had  their  favorites, 
and  the  English  monarch,  had  he  dared,  would  have 


100  BELISARIUS. 

rewarded  them  as  Justinian  rewarded  his,  to  the 
ruin  of  thousands  of  his  other  subjects.  The  Rom 
an  did  leave  one  grand  work  of  architectural  beauty; 
but  our  admiration  for  the  temple  of  Saint  Sophia 
must  be  accompanied  by  the  memory  of  the  means 
by  which  the  money  for  its  erection  was  wrung 
from  an  oppressed  people.  In  the  case  of  Belisa- 
rius,  it  is  both  curious  and  sad  to  contemplate  how 
long  two  such  men  as  he  and  Justinian  could  live 
and  labor  together,  the  one  for  the  glory  of  his 
country,  and  the  other  for  its  disgrace.  The  noble 
monuments  that  were  erected  by  the  one,  even  at 
the  command  of  the  other,  were  by  that  other  ruth 
lessly  destroyed.  While  for  thirty  years,  in  heat 
and  cold,  in  hunger  and  thirst,  in  absence  from  home 
and  country,  the  one  fulfilled  and  surpassed  require 
ments  that  seemed  impossible  except  by  preternat 
ural  powers;  the  other,  in  the  undisturbed  security 
of  his  capital,  grew  old  in  forefending  every  blessed 
result,  and  in  exhibiting  to  the  world  how  easily  and 
how  soon  the  hands  of  the  weak  may  ruin  the  elabo 
rate  works  of  the  great. 

History  furnishes  no  instance  of  a  man  who  re 
ceived  less  of  just  reward  for  his  conduct  in  public 
and  domestic  life.  It  was  a  misfortune  that  such  a 
book  as  the  Anecdotes,  which  purports  to  be  the 
secret  work  of  Procopius,  was  ever  composed.  The 
most  judicious  scholars  among  the  moderns  wholly 


BEUSARIUS.  '-,;,,;.  ior 

reject  its  authenticity,  but  more  because  its  reveal- 
ings  were  in  such  discord  with  his  avowed  histories 
and  his  confidential  relationship  with  Belisarius, 
than  from  discredit  of  any  of  those  revealings  ex 
cept  such  as  were  too  scandalous,  or  were  related 
with  too  great  circumstantiality  to  be  believed. 
The  career  of  Theodora  was  perhaps  more  variously 
eventful  than  that  of  any  woman  in  history.  The 
daughter  of  the  Master  of  the  Bears,  accustomed 
from  infancy  to  the  ribald  language  and  sanguinary 
spectacles  of  the  Circus,  she  was  both  incontinent 
and  cruel.  The  men  of  many  cities  in  the  East 
knew  that  the  lowest  trull  of  the  capital  was  not 
more  shamelessly  profligate  than  she  had  been  from 
her  earliest  puberty  to  the  day  when  she  conceived 
the  hope  that  her  marvellous  beauty  might  ensnare 
the  adopted  son  and  destined  successor  of  Justin. 
When  this  ambition  was  gratified,  and  when  she 
had  become  a  joint  sovereign  with  her  husband,  the 
love  of  power  probably  excluded  every  other  pass 
ion  that  would  endanger  it.  That  power  she  ex 
erted  unceasingly  for  the  exaltation  of  her  favorites, 
and  especially  for  the  punishment  of  her  enemies. 
The  gloomy  prisons  under  the  palace  seldom  re 
ceived  an  inmate  who  was  destined  ever  to  emerge 
into  the  light  of  day.  No  lapse  of  time  could  abate 
her  malignity.  John  of  Cappadocia,  in  the  pride 
of  that  power  which  his  value  to  the  Emperor  had 


102  BELISARIUS. 

erected,  once  provoked  her  displeasure.  She 
smiled  and  patiently  bided  her  time.  Years  after 
wards  the  trap  was  laid,  and  the  minister  was 
caught.  He,  under  whose  cruel  rapacity  every 
province  of  the  empire  had  groaned,  was  hurled 
from  his  high  estate  and  scourged  into  beggary  and 
exile.  Antonina,  scarcely  less  fair,  was  a  favorite, 
partly  because  she  was  of  similar  origin  and  frail 
ties,  and  partly  because  she  was  found  to  be  a  most 
facile  instrument  in  the  execution  of  her  secret 
plans.  Theodora  regarded  Belisarius  with  all  the 
hate  that  a  bad  woman  is  capable  of  feeling  for  a 
great  and  good  man  of  whom  she  believes  she  has 
reason  to  be  afraid;  and  she  intensely  enjoyed  her 
revenge  in  the  infidelities  of  Antonina,  to  which 
she  even  descended  to  become  the  procuress.  We 
can  not  believe  all  that  has  been  told  of  Antonina 
and  Theodosius;  but  we  know  that  there  was 
enough  to  cast  upon  the  heart  of  her  husband  a 
shadow  which  neither  more  splendid  success  than 
he  had  already  attained  could  remove,  nor  a  grosser 
ingratitude  of  the  Emperor  deepen.  He  was  in 
deed  slow  to  credit  what  was  evident  to  all  the 
world,  and  perhaps  even  a  doubt  lingered  to  the 
last  if  he  ought  not  to  believe  the  protestations  of 
one  so  fair  and  so  well  beloved,  who  had  followed 
him  in  all  his  wars  but  one,  and  shared  in  every 
privation  and  danger  except  those  of  the  very  battle. 


BELISARIUS.  103 

The  weakness  that  could  entertain  such  a  doubt  is 
not  only  compatible  with  the  loftiest  genius  and  the 
noblest  sense  of  personal  honor,  but  it  is  associated 
with  them  oftener  and  more  naturally  than  with 
those  inferior  natures  that  look  for  the  infirmities 
which  from  experience  they  know  to  be  possible.  A 
great  .and  pure  mind  is  easily  deceived  in  the  matter 
of  vices,  which,  in  its  own  exalted  way,  it  meets  no 
temptation  to  commit.  Aurelius  was  a  philosopher 
and  the  best  of  kings;  yet  he  praised  the  gods  for 
the  gift  of  Faustina.  Belisarius  was  less  fortunate: 
he  was  made  at  least  to  doubt.  And  then  there 
was  their  daughter,  beloved  of  them  both,  Joannina; 
and  then,  perhaps,  he  could  only  doubt.  In  this 
lifelong  incertitude,  in  this  eternal  shadowing  of  his 
heart  of  hearts,  while  we  can  credit  even  but  a  small 
portion  of  the  statements  contained  in  the  strange 
work  before  mentioned,  yet  we  may  feel  ourselves 
competent  to  account  for  that  extraordinary  serenity 
with  which  he  endured  the  wrongs  of  his  sovereign, 
that,  without  abatement,  followed  him  from  an  early 
period  in  his  high  career  down  to  the  tomb,  and  even 
beyond  the  tomb.  The  persistent  absence  of  all 
resentment  against  ingratitude  and  persecution,  the 
ready  obedience  that  looked  like  base  servility  to 
the  whimsical  requirements  of  a  bigoted  and  malig 
nant  despot,  lead  us,  with  what  we  know  of  his 
domestic  sorrows,  to  look  for  other  motives  to  such 


104  BELISARIUS. 

conduct  beside  the  promptings  of  patriotism  and 
the  sacred  obligation  to  honor  the  king.  These, 
doubtless,  were  ever  present  with  him,  but  he  had 
been  'greater  or  less  than  man,'  as  the  eloquent  Gib 
bon  in  such  unreasonable  connexion  exclaims,  if,  in 
addition  to  these  motives,  there  were  not  others 
which  were  not  only  above  the  fear  of  death,  but 
which  could  spring  only  from  an  anguish  that  could 
admit  no  other  pain. 

After  the  repulse  of  the  Bulgarians,  there  was 
nothing  further  for  Belisarius  to  do.  Like  the 
prophet,  he  had  stood  in  his  lot,  and  was  waiting 
for  the  end  of  the  days.  One  more  blow,  the  last, 
must  be  inflicted.  A  petty  plot  against  the  Em 
peror  was  discovered,  and  although  he  was  soon 
fully  acquitted  of  the  charge  of  complicity  and  re 
leased  from  imprisonment,  yet  his  estate  was  for 
feited,  because  of  the  apprehension  which  he  had 
most  innocently  raised.  A  few  months  more  of 
unmolested  contemplation,  and  all  of  Belisarius, 
except  his  name  and  memory,  passed  away.  The 
story  of  his  blindness  to  which  we  are  indebted  for 
some  of  the  most  beautiful  creations  of  music  and 
romance,  though  with  little  foundation,  has  kept  its 
place  as  a  tradition,  because  of  our  proneness  to  be 
lieve  all  the  worst  that  can  be  told  of  tyrants.  Jus 
tinian,  as  if  the  purpose  of  his  living  had  been  to 
show  how  disastrous  is  the  rule  of  an  incompetent 


BELISARIUS.  105 

prince,  and  how  the  ingratitude  of  the  human  heart 
may  increase  with  the  powers  and  opportunities 
and  obligations  of  reward,  did  not  long  survive  his 
great  captain.  Together  they  had  performed  dis 
tinguished  parts  in  life,  and  together  they  left  the 
stage.  They  were  so  intimately  joined  in  their 
lives  and  in  their  deaths,  that  the  Plaudite  which 
followed  the  Thracian  was  abundant  to  include  the 
Scythian  also, 


GEORGE     ELIOT'S    MARRIED 
PEOPLE. 

\17ORKS  of  the  imagination  get  their  coloring 
*  *  from  the  lives  of  their  creators.  They  are 
concretes  formed  from  individual  experiences,  par 
ticularly  so  when  on  the  side  of  the  suffering  or  the 
mainly  earnest.  Walter  Scott  must  reproduce  in 
one  and  another  form  the  legends,  mostly  sad,  which 
when  a  child,  he  learned  at  Sandy  Knowe  on  the 
border  famous  for  chivalric  deeds  enacted  long  be 
fore.  Dickens  must  recall  the  Marshalsea  and 
others  whereamong  his  poor  childhood  had  been 
spent.  Thackeray,  after  the  loss  of  his  inherited 
estate  and  the  comrades  who  had  helped  him  to 
squander  it,  could  not  but  lash  society  for  its  de- 
ceitfulness  and  other  meannesses  which  were  con 
temptible  rather  than  vicious. 

We  are  now  to  speculate  about  a  woman,  who,  in 
the  matter  of  genius  was  not  inferior  to  either  of 
these  illustrious  men,  and  who,  being  a  woman,  and 
an  intensely  unhappy  one,  revealed  her  interior  being 
in  ways  to  excite  painful  compassion  for  the  strug- 

106 


GEORGE    ELIOT  S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  1 07 

gles,  which  without  support  from  any  outer  source, 
through  a  life  of  three  score  years,  she  strove  to 
mitigate  and  endure.  Made  motherless  when  a 
young  child,  with  a  father  rude,  stern,  exacting,  who 
had  no  suspicion  of  the  gifts  which  ought  to  have 
been  apparent  to  even  his  dull  eyes,  she  must  make 
her  way  in  some  sort  between  his  ignorant,  servile 
obedience  to  established  forms,  and  the  independent 
fiery  zeal  of  her  aunts  who  had  revolted  and  joined 
the  standard  of  the  Methodists,  among  whom  one 
of  these  aunts  became  a  zealous  preacher.  As  she 
grew  older,  contemplation  of  this  frigidity  on  one, 
and  what  seemed  an  immoderate  unreasoning  fervor 
on  the  other  side  of  her  family,  drove  her,  when 
come  to  womanhood,  to  suspect  that  ever-continu 
ing,  ever-sustaining  religious  faith  was  not  to  be 
gotten  in  either  of  the  forms  with  which  she  had 
become  acquainted.  In  this  frame,  she  went  forth 
into  the  world  to  seek,  not  fame,  of  which  she  had 
never  dreamed,  but  an  honorable  livelihood. 

It  is  a  sore  misfortune  to  a  thoughtful  earnest 
mind  to  lose  the  form  of  religious  faith  in  which 
during  childhood  it  had  humbly  trusted,  and  after 
wards  be  unable  to  find  another  which  satisfies  its 
yearnings.  If  ever  there  was  a  spirit  which  was  in 
need  of  an  authoritative  discipline  of  religious  be 
lief,  a  discipline  adequate  to  save  from  distrust  of 
certain  moral  obligation  and  from  despair  from  its 


108  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

violation,  it  was  Marian  Evans.  For  her  own  hap 
piness,  for  all  the  exigencies  of  her  own  being,  it 
would  have  been  better  if  she  had  been  less  gifted, 
or  more  prone  to  the  tendencies  of  feebler  natures, 
and  with  a  less  ardent  charity  for  the  wants  of  the 
needy  and  the  losses  of  the  frail.  As  it  was,  her 
aspirations  were  for  the  highest  attainable  good  in 
government,  in  civil,  social,  and  domestic  life;  and 
her  charities  were  so  large  that  they  included  not 
only  the  abject  and  squalid  of  the  human  race, 
but  lesser  animals  which  man  sometimes,  as  if  for 
no  other  cause  but  having  received  the  gift  of  rea 
son,  loves  either  to  wantonly  destroy,  or  whimsically 
maltreat.  Marian  Evans  not  only  gave  what  she 
could  spare  for  the  alleviation  of  human  suffering, 
but  she  would  have  stopped  a  traveller  on  the  high 
way,  and  begged  to  put  her  handkerchief  or  her 
mantle  under  the  collar  that  galled  the  shoulder  of 
his  jade;  and  she  would  have  gone  to  the  woods  in 
order  to  fetch  a  green  bough,  and  extend  it  to  a 
worm  which,  the  wind  having  blown  from  its  native 
tree,  she  might  have  found  writhing  its  moist,  frail 
body  in  the  sand.  Such  was  she  when  she  went  to 
her  first  work  in  the  town  of  Coventry. 

A  girl  who  is  poor  and  who  is  without  personal 
attractions  of  any  sort,  when  cast  upon  the  world, 
is  apt  to  feel  that  she  must  take  the  first  offer  for 
work  which  comes  of  a  kind  for  which  she  knows 


GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  109 

herself  to  be  competent.  Yet  it  was  not  without 
some  reluctance,  if  not  some  shuddering,  that  she 
undertook  to  translate  into  English  the  Leben  Jesu 
of  Strauss,  who,  first  having  adopted  the  bold  teach 
ing  of  Hegel  and  Schleiermacher,  went  to  the  audac 
ity  of  declaring  the  Gospels  no  more  than  myths 
of  superstitious  times.  The  performance  of  this 
work  led  her  to  the  place  which  for  her  was  next  to 
the  worst  in  all  London  town,  the  editorial  rooms 
of  the  Westminister  Review.  These  were  rooms 
wherein  a  man  might  exist  and  seem  to  thrive;  but 
they  were  no  proper  or  safe  resort  for  a  woman,  es 
pecially  one  with  the  spirit  and  what  had  been  and 
what  still  were  the  yearnings  of  Marian  Evans.  Yet, 
she  was  in  need  of  work  and  it  seemed  to  her  the 
best  opportunity  to  obtain  it,  and  out  of  the  society 
of  the  Positivists  whom  she  met  there  habitually 
she  must  get,  what  must  be  gotten  from  some  source, 
the  intellectual  and  moral  sustenance  without  which 
such  a  being  must  lapse  into  inanity  or  plunge  into 
despair.  Not  but  that  a  habit  of  free  thinking  had 
not  already  begun,  coming  forth  out  of  her  tumult 
uous  strugglings  with  many  forms  of  doubt.  Some 
time  back  while  reading  Charlotte  Bronte's  novel, 
fane  Eyre,  she  had  dwelt  with  a  bounding  heart 
upon  the  recital  of  the  misery  and  shame  of  the 
poor  governess  when  she  found  that  the  man  who 
had  conquered  her  heart  had  a  wife  who,  although 


110  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

hopelessly  insane,  was  yet  alive.  "They  had  a 
right  to  marry  in  the  circumstances!"  exclaimed 
Marian  Evans.  These  bold  words  showed  how  far 
already  she  had  strayed  from  the  faith  of  her  fathers, 
and  even  from  respect  for  the  social  laws  of  her  own 
and  all  Christian  communities.  If  she  could  be 
lieve  thus  of  the  obligations  of  the  marriage  bond 
when  one  party  had  been  rendered  by  the  act  of 
God  unfit  for  conjugal  union,  it  was  to  be  forseen 
what  her  decision  would  be  when  such  unfitness  had 
been  produced  by  dishonorable  action. 

Among  the  coterie  of  Free-thinkers  in  those 
rooms  was  George  Henry  Lewes.  He  was  gifted 
with  not  a  single  outward  charm  such  as  those  of 
Rochester  in  the  novel  who,  from  anguishing 
thoughts  of  his  maniac  wife,  turned  for  relief  to  the 
petite  governess  and  dreamed  and  dreamed,  and 
finally  trusted  that  he  might  get  her  to  supply  the 
place  in  a  being  left  so  destitute.  No.  George 
Henry  Lewes  was  the  very  ugliest  man  who  had 
ever  been  in  those  rooms.  He  was  the  very  incar 
nation  of  ugliness.  Men  did  not  say  that  he  had 
the  horn  of  a  rhinoceros,  as  Milton  seemed  to  fear, 
from  the  abuse  of  Salmasius,  might  be  believed  of 
him ;  but  they  did  say  that  he  had  the  face  of  a  dog, 
and  that  of  a  Scotch  terrier,  the  ugliest  of  all  dogs. 
Yet  we  know  that  even  the  Satyrs,  like  men  in  one 
way  and  another,  could  win  the  love  of  women,  and 


GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  Ill 

George  Henry  Lewes  succeeded  in  persuading  one 
to  be  his  wife;  who,  after  having  borne  three  chil 
dren,  irretrievably  ruined  both  herself  and  her  hus 
band.  Then  he  spurned  from  his  bosom  and  his 
house  her  whom  he  ought  never,  to  have  taken  to 
either,  and  invited  Marian  Evans  to  assume  the 
place  in  both,  and  she,  being  now  thirty-five  years 
old,  consented.  At  this  union  were  none  of  the 
tumultuous  conditions  which  attended  the  unhappy- 
Dido  when  driven  by  the  resistless  influences  of  the 
goddesses,  she  fled  with  the  Trojan  to  the  grotto  in 
the  forest  of  Carthage ;  but  its  very  deliberation  made 
it  indeed  a  "day  of  death." 

Yet,  be  it  remembered  that  this  woman,  who  for 
tunately  was  to  bear  no  offspring  of  her  own,  if  she 
could  not  become  warmly  attached  to  the  children 
of  her  predecessor,*made  them  attached  to  her  with 
an  affection  that  seemed  filial,  tended  them  in  health 
and  sickness,  and  at  the  dying  bed  of  one  of  them 
watched  and  waited  with  an  assiduity  of  devotion 
that  the  sufferer  never  had  had  and  never  would 
have  had  from  her  who  had  given  him  birth.  Indeed 
she  seemed  to  feel  as  if  she  was  as  bound  to  every 
behest  of  wife  and  mother  as  those  upon  whom  at 
the  nuptial  altar  the  chain  had  been  laid  amid  sol- 
emnest  vows  and  invocations  of  Heavenly  blessing. 
Marian  Evans  believed,  rather  she  imagined  that 
she  believed,  that  the  bond  with  which  she  had 


112  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

bound  herself  to  this  man  was,  if  possible,  of  more 
binding  obligation  upon  her,  because  it  was  one 
which,  having  neither  the  sanction  of  Heaven  nor 
her  country's  laws  had  nothing  to  hold  it  sacred  be 
yond  her  own  plighted  word.  Then  this  companion 
with  all  of  his  ugliness,  had  the  affectionateness  of  a 
grateful  lover,  and,  sooner  than  she  did,  found  out 
wherein  lay  the  greatest  gifts  of  her  who  had 
made  such  sacrifices  to  join  her  being  with  his 
own;  for  he  was  possessed  of  extraordinary  genius, 
and  it  had  received  the  highest  culture. 

By  this  time  she  had  strayed,  except  in  instinct 
ive  feeling,  entirely  away  from  the  religious  faith  of 
her  childhood.  Such  it  must  have  been,  otherwise 
every  moment  of  her  waking  existence  would  have 
been  beset  by  fears  which  would  have  gotten  little 
relief  from  such  union  with  any  man  however  gifted 
with  the  graces  which  win  the  love  of  women. 
Among  the  fondest  of  her  recollections  was  that  of 
a  sojourn  near  lake  Geneva,  whereat  she  read  over 
and  over  again  that  wonderful  book,  the  Confes 
sions  of  Rousseau.  It  was  bad  to  have  so  loved 
this  work  of  a  man,  who,  next  to  Voltaire,  and  in 
some  respects  beyond  him,  was  of  all  men  of  gen 
ius,  the  most  reprobate,  not  only  to  religion  and 
morality,  but  to  decency.  Not  that  Marian  Evans 
had  a  love  of  foulness;  but  she  drank  into  her  pass 
ionate  being  without  painful  reluctance  all  the  foul- 


GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  113 

ness  because  it  was  in  the  same  cup  which  contained 
the  voluptuous  seductive  sentimentality  which  dis 
tinguished  above  all  mankind  this  extraordinary 
spirit.  Such  reading  had  led  her,  some  time  before 
her  connection  with  Lewes,  to  entertain  too  inde 
pendent  views  of  married  life,  and  to  the  concep 
tion  that  there  was  a  felicity  to  which,  without 
words  of  priest  and  sanction  of  religions  or  munic 
ipal  law,  a  brave  spirit,  striving  with  full  integrity 
of  purpose,  might  aspire.  When  five  and  twenty 
years  of  age,  while  discussing  the  opinions  of 
Madame  de  Sable  about  marriage,  she  wrote  thus : 

"Heaven  forbid  that  we  should  enter  on  a  defence  of  French  mor 
als,  most  of  all  in  reference  to  marriage!  But  it  is  undeniable  that 
unions  formed  in  the  maturity  of  thought  and  feeling,  and  grounded 
only  on  inherent  fitness  and  mutual  attraction,  tended  to  bring  wom 
en  into  more  intelligent  sympathy  with  men  and  to  heighten  and 
complicate  their  share  in  the  political  drama.  The  quiescence  and 
security  of  the  conjugal  relation  are  doubtless  favorable  to  the  man 
ifestation  of  the  highest  qualities  by  persons  who  have  already  at 
tained  a  high  standard  of  culture,  but  rarely  foster  a  passion  sufficient 
to  rouse  all  the  faculties  to  aid  in  winning  or  retaining  its  beloved 
object,  to  convert  indolence  into  activity,  indifference  into  ardent 
partisanship,  dullness  into  perspicuity." 

These  were  prophetic  words  destined  to  fulfillment 
ten  years  afterwards.  The  man  who  had  read  this 
article  in  the  Westminister  Review,  knew  well  enough 
that  if  his  intended  proposal  were  rejected,  it  would 
not  be  because  it  was  regarded  immoral,  or  even 
dishonorable. 

The  Scenes    of    Clerical  Life,  which,   over   the 


114  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

name  of  George  Eliot,  she  wrote  for  Blackwood's 
Magazine,  excited  everybody's  attention.  It  ap 
peared  full  soon  that  the  man  (as  he  was  thought  to 
be)  who  wrote  them  had  little  admiration  for  the 
mild-mannered  country  clergyman,  neither  hot  or 
notably  cold,  who  honorably  complied  with  the 
written  demands  of  his  office,  got  for  himself  as 
comfortable,  even  luxurious  living  as  possible  to  the 
amount  of  his  stipend  and  the  liberality  of  his  par 
ishioners,  and  in  the  solitude  of  his  home,  whether 
as  a  married  man  or  a  bachelor,  comforted  himself 
with  mild  harmless  dalliance  with  the  flute.  One  of 
these  clerical  gentlemen  for  a  time  was  taken  for  the 
author,  and  the  while  upon  the  strength  of  such  rep 
utation  got  many  a  finer  dinner  than  he  could  have 
had  at  home. 

But  the  public  heard  far  different  words  when  in 
Adam  Bede,  the  novelist  talked  of  those  spirits 
who,  however  fanatical  they  might  be  regarded, 
were  believed  to  be  striving  for  a  spiritual  life  more 
earnest  than  that  which  they  saw  in  their  midst. 
The  mind  of  Marian  Evans  was  passionately  ser 
ious.  The  exquisite  humor  that  is  found  with  suffi 
cient  frequency  in  her  writings,  instead  of  subtract 
ing  from  the  evidence  that  the  serious  predominated 
over  the  sportive  in  her  being,  as  it  does  in  all  great 
humorists,  enhanced  it.  For  humor  goes  hand  in 
hand  with  sadness,  or  in  continually  iterated  se- 


GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  115 

quence,  and  such  minds  are  the  only  ones  which  are 
able  to  create  interesting  concretes  out  of  the  life 
of  mankind.  Among  the  Wesleyans  were  near  rel 
atives,  prominent  among  whom  was  her  aunt,  who, 
out  of  resentment  to  the  order  excluding  women 
from  the  pulpit,  left  the  society  with  hope  to  make 
herself  as  pronounced  as  possible  else\vhere.  This 
aunt  had  suggested  the  character  of  Dinah,  in 
Adam  Bede,  and  thus  she  wrote  to  a  friend  after 
hearing  of  the  suggestions  that  those  pathetic 
sermons  of  Dinah  had  been  copied  and  without 
feeling : 

"You  see  .how  my  aunt  suggested  "Dinah;"  but  it  is  impossible 
you  should  see,  as  I  do,  how  entirely  her  individuality  differed  from 
"Dinah's."  How  curious  it  seems  to  me  that  people  should  think 
that  "Dinah's"  sermon,  prayers,  and  speeches  were  copied,  when 
they  were  written  with  hot  tears  as  they  surged  up  in  my  own 
mind." 

The  pathos  in  the  words  of  Dinah  had  their 
seal  in  those  of  her  who  had  been  long  searching 
for  rest  to  her  spirit  and  had  not  been  able  to 
find  it. 

For  the  purposes  of  this  article  one  of  the  most 
interesting  of  George  Eliot's  novels  is  The  Mill  on 
the  Floss.  According  to  the  Biography  of  her 
friend,  Mathilde  Blind,  it  contains  a  history  of  the 
author  and  her  family.  In  Maggie  Tulliver  we 
read  the  life  of  Marian  Evans'  childhood  and  young 
womanhood,  and  we  suspected  to  foresee  that  some- 


Il6  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

thing  out  of  the  usual  course  was  to  attend  the  ca 
reer  of  a  girl  who  was  wont  to  keep  in  an  attic  with 
its  worm-eaten  floors  and  rafters  a  "fetisch  which 
she  punished  for  all  her  misfortunes"  and  drove  nails 
into  the  head  of  a  hideous  wooden  doll  in  imita 
tion  of  the  vengeance  of  Jael  upon  the  sleeping 
Sisera.  Maggie  Tulliver  has  been  styled  "the  most 
adorable  of  George  Eliot's  women."  True  to  the 
author's  views  of  matters  appertaining  to  marriage 
she  gave  to  her  a  vulgarian  for  a  lover.  Of  the 
adorable  woman  herself  she  wrote  that,  with  all  her 
charming  qualities  she  had  "more  affinity  with  poets 
and  artists  than  with  saints  and  martyrs"  and  that 
she  yielded  her  heart  "to  an  attraction  lying  entire 
ly  in  the  magnetism  of  passion."  Strange  words 
for  a  woman  to  write  about  one  of  her  own  creation 
who  was  to  be  styled  the  most  adorable  of  them  all ! 
What  would  have  become  of  Maggie  had  she  not 
died  we  can  only  conjecture  by  considering  the  fate 
of  the  girl  whom  she  represented,  who,  unfortunately 
for  herself,  did  not  die  in  her  youth. 

As  to  the  married  experience  of  the  three  Dodson 
girls,  Mrs.  Tulliver,  Maggie's  mother,  and  her  two 
aunts,  Mrs.  Pullet,  and  Mrs.  Glegg!  In  all  litera 
ture  there  is  nothing  more  ludicrous,  yet  more  mel 
ancholy.  In  the  midst  of  gushing  laughter,  it  is 
sad  to  think  on  the  lesson  which  we  are  expected 
to  learn  and  the  moral  which  we  are  allowed  to  de- 


GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  I  17 

duce  from  these  instances  of  married  life.  Mrs. 
Pullet,  who  all  along  had  been  hoping  to  find  a  hus 
band  whose  "inherent  fitness"  would  be  the  very 
thing  to  satisfy  a  woman  of  extreme  gentility,  whose 
claim  to  it  was  founded  mainly  upon  the  delicacy 
of  her  health,  found  that  she  had  been  married  to 
a  person  who  was  not  very  much  more  than  a  little 
spindling  old  maid,  and  who  had  the  meanness  to 
be  almost  as  ailing  as  herself.  In  this  couple  there 
could  not  be  any  decisive  amount  of  domestic  mis 
ery,  as  neither  could  find  in  the  other  much  upon 
which  it  would  have  imparted  very  much  satisfaction 
to  prey,  or  even  to  pick.  So  of  Mrs.  Tulliver,  a 
description  of  whose  character  is  given  briefly  on 
the  occasion  of  a  remark  made  to  her  husband  after 
the  quarrel  with  Sister  Glegg,  when,  troubled  by  the 
fear  that  he  would  be  called  upon  to  pay  the  debt 
owed  to  her,  she  was  affectionately  trying  to  sug 
gest  a -course  more  prudent  than  giving  way  to  re 
sentment  : 

"Mrs.  Tulliver  had  lived  thirteen  years  with  her  husband,  yet  she 
retained  with  all  of  the  freshness  of  her  early  married  life  a  faculty 
of  saying  things  which  drove  him  in  the  opposite  direction  to  the 
one  she  desired.  Some  minds  are  wonderful  in  keeping  their  bloom 
in  this  way,  as  a  patriarchal  gold-fish  apparently  retains  to  the  last 
its  youthful  illusion  that  it  can  swim  in  a  straight  line  beyond  the 
encircling  glass.  Mrs.  Tulliver  was  an  amiable  fish  of  this  kind,  and, 
after  running  her  head  against  the  same  resisting  medium  for  thir 
teen  years,  would  go  at  it  again  to-day  with  undulled  alacrity." 

But  what  must  we  think   of  Aunt  Glegg  with  her 


Il8  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

magisterial  ways,  her  small  economies,  her  anxiety 
to  make,  after  she  was  dead  many  years  thereafter, 
a  handsome  figure  in  her  will,  and  her  frequent  ref 
erence  to  "the  way  in  our  family?"  Yet,  Mr.  Glegg 
was  not  like  his  brother-in-law,  poor  Mr.  Pullet.  He 
had  a  salutary  sullenness  which  served  well  enough 
the  purposes  which  aggression  would  not  have 
helped.  When  the  wife  of  his  bosom  at  a  family 
dinner  party  at  the  Tullivers'  had  put  upon  Mr. 
Tulliver  indignities  which  he  was  driven  at  last  to 
resent,  she  appealed  to  her  husband,  not  for  sympa 
thy,  but  to  have  his  forces  joined  with  hers  in  order 
to  crush  her  little  insect  of  a  brother-in-law.  Now 
Mr.  Glegg  had  not  the  heart  for  such  warfare.  One 
may  read  (twelfth  chapter)  in  a  scene  at  the  break 
fast  table  a  choice  specimen  of  the  domestic  life  of 
that  interesting  couple,  and  learn  what  precedents 
this  young  member  of  the  family  believed  that  she 
owed  it  to  herself  not  to  follow. 

If  the  life  of  Marian  Evans  was  like  that  of  Mag 
gie  Tulliver  among  these  parents  and  these  aunts, 
it  is  no  wonder  that  she  grew  up  with  the  free  opin 
ions  which  led  to  her  subsequent  action.  As  for 
her  courtship  by  Stephen  Guest,  it  was  much  like 
that  of  the  savage  for  the  unprotected  maid  whom 
he  chances  to  find  straying  too  far  from  home — low 
er  indeed,  because  to  the  pursued  was  imparted 
somewhat  of  the  fierceness  of  the  pursuer  which  led 


GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  119 

her  to  wish  as  well  as  fear  to  be  overtaken.  She  was 
saved  from  ruin  by  accidental  death.  Perhaps, 
indeed  we  may  almost  suspect,  that  she  who  in 
dited  her  history  sometimes  regretted  that  in  her 
youth  she  also  had  not  gone  down  beneath  the 
flood. 

As  the  lovers  of  George  Eliot  grow  in  intelli 
gence,  in  the  opportunities  of  culture,  and  the  oc 
cupancy  of  higher  social  positions,  they  are  made 
to  illustrate  seriously,  as  those  which  I  have  de 
scribed  illustrate  ludicrously,  the  author's  ideas  of 
the  insufficiency  of  marriage  to  bring  the  happiness 
which  it  always  promises.  In  Middle-march  it 
makes  the  heart  sick  to  read  the  disappointment  of 
Dorothea  in  the  lofty  expectations  which  she  had 
indulged  of  the  felicity  to  come  from  the  society  of 
such  a  man  as  Casaubon,  wherein  every  sweet  and 
every  devout  aspiration  of  her  heart  are  made  to 
turn  back  upon  and  rend  itself.  Then  the  punish 
ment  of  Lydgate,  who,  a  gentleman  born  and  bred, 
took  to  wife  a  woman  who  had  nothing  to  commend 
herself  except  physical  beauty  whose  fascination  his 
lower  nature  could  not  resist.  It  seems  like  cruelty 
how  this  woman  understood  the  methods  of  driving 
her  husband  to  the  brink  of  despair  by  her  selfish 
ness,  coarseness,  and  duplicity,  and  luring  him  back 
by  presentation  in  new  phases  and  attitudes  the 
charms  which,  in  spite  of  his  manhood,  had  won  him 


120  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

in  the  outset,  and  which,  though  ever  trifling  with 
and  abusing  it,  held  their  sway. 

Now  what  is  mostly  notable  among  the  married 
people  of  this  author  is  that  they  are  made  to  refrain 
from  violation  of  the  letter  of  the  bond  which  has 
bound  them  together,  even  though  its  spirit  has  been 
so  long  and  repeatedly  broken  that  it  has  become 
hopeless  of  amendment.  This  fact  kept  her  from 
being  one  of  the  evilest  teachers  of  mankind.  She 
did  not  mean  to  be  a  teacher  of  evil.  She  was  too 
charitable,  and,  according  to  her  ideas  of  innocence, 
too  innocent  for  that;  and  so  she  made  her  married 
people  faithful  to  their  bonds.  In  reading  Middle- 
march,  we  constantly  expect,  and  are  made  almost 
to  wish  for  Dorothea,  ardent  as  devout,  to  leave  the 
pompous  autocrat,  who,  although  not  bloody-minded 
like  Bluebeard,  had  no  more  regard  than  he  for  a 
wife's  individuality,  or  Lydgate  to  decide  that  every 
prompting  of  his  manhood  required  him  to  withdraw 
from  one  who  had  repeatedly  dishonored  it.  No : 
there  was  that  fatal  bond  which  these  obligors,  un 
like  Shylock,  construe  against  themselves,  and  wait 
for  death  or  like  event  to  set  them  free. 

One  of  the  most  affecting  scenes  illustrating  this 
characteristic  is  that  wherein  is  told  of  the  meeting 
between  Mrs.  Bulstrode  and  her  husband  when  his 
early  knavery,  unsuspected  during  twenty  years  of 
married  life,  had  been  detected  and  the  uncovered 


GEORGE    ELIOT  S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  121 

felon  sat  in  his  study  and  awaited  as  a  murderer 
awaits  the  verdict  of  a  jury,  the  conduct  of  his 
wife,  who,  in  her  chamber  above,  had  been  reflect 
ing  upon  the  news  she  had  just  heard,  and  upon 
what  sort  of  bosom  her  trusting  head  had  been  rest 
ing  so  long.  It  is  not  easy  to  read  without  tears 
how  that  proud  woman,  after  putting  off  the  finery 
in  which  but  yesterday  she  had  been  flaunting  in 
arrogance  among  the  lesser  women  of  her  acquaint 
ance,  and  clothing  in  the  plain  things  which  she 
knew  that  she  was  doomed  to  wear  for  the  rest  of  her 
life,  descended  the  stairs,  went  to  her  husband  bowed 
down  with  shame  and  terror,  and.  standing  over  him 
awhile  in  silence,  at  length,  calmly  said  "  Nicholas, 
look  up." 

Now,  what  could  have  been  the  motive  of  this 
strange  woman  to  treat  with  such  solemn  respect  an 
institution  at  which,  in  her  philosophical  writings  she 
had  sneered,  and  whose  sacred  behests  her  own  life 
had  dishonored?  Eagerly  fond  of  the  Confessions 
of  Rousseau,  admiring  these  female  writers  of 
France,  who  had  exhibited  what  she  styled  "  the 
courage  of  their  sex,"  yet  she  could  not  pass  to  the 
length  whither  the  boldest  among  those  had  dared 
and  make  marriage  a  covert  for  the  resort  of  un 
lawful  loves,  instead  of  a  clean  bower  for  lawful,  or 
at  least  a  shelter  for  the  sorely  tempted.  She  fol 
lowed  such  precedents  as  far  as  a  mind,  which, 


122  GEORGE    ELIOT  S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

though  perverted,  was  yet  generous,  could  follow 
without  doing  violence  to  instincts  that  were  inerad 
icable,  and  to  traditions  of  home  and  country  which 
it  was  impossible  to  wholly  ignore.  Her  married 
lovers  are  not  happy.  The  most  cultured  and  in 
teresting  among  them  either  are  miserable,  or  they 
have  grown  to  despise  themselves  for  having  had  so 
little  forethought  as  to  bind  themselves  irrevocably 
to  those  whom  they  have  found  to  be  entirely  unfit 
for  the  superior  purposes  for  which  union  had  been 
sought  and  consummated.  Yet  they  forbear  from 
violation  and  separation  the  possible  results  ot 
which  are  feared  to  be  yet  more  unhappy.  These 
husbands  and  these  wives  are  like  the  lepers  who, 
while  seeing  death  in  return  to  the  city  from  which 
they  were  cast  out,  feared  one  more  terrific  among 
the  enemies  who  were  advancing  against  their  whole 
nation.  Shrinking  from  gross  dishonor  of  marriage 
vows,  they  hate  them  more  fiercely  for  their  inad 
equacy  to  fulfill  their  stipulations.  These  vows 
were  like  the  oath  by  the  Styx,  the  dark,  slow  mov 
ing  river  of  Hell,  which  only  Fate,  not  men  nor 
gods,  could  absolve.  Men  and  women  may  well 
pause  before  taking,  and  hold  on  to  the  freedom 
from  which  how  perilous  it  is  to  part  George  Eliot 
has  told  in  pictures  which  make  one  sometimes  shout 
with  laughter,  and  sometimes  shudder  with  horror 
to  look  upon;  but  when  they  have  taken,  they  have 


GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  123 

gone  upon  a  bourne  like  that  from  which  no  travel 
ler  returns.  Therefore  it  is,  in  spite  of  her  free- 
thinking  principles,  and  her  own  eccentric  life,  that 
the  creations  of  her  imagination,  like  the  curse  of 
the  weak,  unfaithful  prophet,  become  a  blessing  in 
so  far  as  they  tend  to  evince  that  in  the  great  heart 
of  humanity  the  feeling  is  ineradicable  that  marriage 
is  an  institution  of  God,  and  that  its  bonds  by 
human  means  are  indissoluble. 

We  have  often  suspected  that  Marian  Evans  had 
such  purpose  among  others,  in  view  while  engaged 
in  her  wonderful  work,  as  if  impelled  by  the  in 
stinctive  delicacy  of  her  sex  thus  to  make  some 
compensation  for  what,  in  the  great  deep  of  her 
heart,  she  must  sometimes  have  feared,  was  a  mis 
take  in  her  own  career;  and  in  this  view  I  am  con 
firmed  by  her  marriage  after  the  death  of  her  com 
panion.  That  such  a  woman,  had  she  been  young, 
had  married  would  have  been  most  natural.  When 
such  a  loss  occurs,  the  more  anguishing  its  recol 
lection,  the  more  apt  a  suffering  heart  is,  to  look 
about  for  some  support  against  despair,  and  of  all 
these,  the  surest,  most  grateful  is  the  diversion  to 
another  love.  Of  all  seasons  for  a  lover,  if  he  be 
both  delicate  and  artful,  to  approach  the  object  of 
his  pursuit,  that  is  most  favorable  when  the  one  who 
is  sought  is  forlorn  with  the  sense  of  bereavement  of 
a  love  which  has  forever  gone. 


124  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

"The  Lady  of  Ephesus"  in  the  Satyricon  of 
Petronius  Arbiter  is  a  satire,  but  it  was  founded 
upon  a  principle  in  our  being  which  Heaven  im 
planted  there  for  purposes  not  less  benignant  than 
wise.  Man  and  woman  must  turn  their  backs  upon 
graves  and  their  faces  to  the  world.  Extravagant 
as  are  the  things  told  of  the  Roman  Soldier  and 
the  young  widow  watching  by  the  bier  of  her  hus 
band,  yet  some  therein  described  are  more  natural, 
more  common,  and  more  fit  than  a  lifetime  yearning 
for  the  dead  and  refusal  to  be  comforted  by  the  liv 
ing.  Seldom  indeed  is  similar  haste  to  be  noted 
among  women,  especially  those  already  past  the 
period  of  youth:  for,  besides  that  love  with  them  is 
a  greater  part  of  existence  than  with  men,  they 
dread  more  the  appearance  of  levity,  are  usually 
more  constant,  more  religious-minded,  more  able  to 
endure  misfortune,  and  more  capable  to  find  resig 
nation.  But  how  often  do  we  see  an  old  man  who 
has  been  bereft  of  the  loved  companion  through  all 
the  years  of  his  manhood,  after  a  season  of  wailing 
for  his  overwhelming  loss,  suddenly  rise  from  his 
ashes,  straighten  his  bent  shoulders,  trim  himself  in 
youthful  garments,  and  strive  to  move  with  easy 
gayety  among  women  of  whom  he  might  have  been 
the  grandfather!  Such  deportment,  ludicrous  as  it 
seems,  is  but  assertion  of  the  instinct  of  self  preser 
vation  common  to  all  periods  of  human  life,  and, 


GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  125 

instead  of  indicating  disrespect  to  the  memory  of 
the  dead,  is  rather,  pitiful  as  it  is,  the  most  con 
vincing  proof  how  dearly  they  were  prized  while 
alive.  How  mournful  are  the  words  of  Abraham  at 
the  funerals  of  Sarah.  "Then  Abraham  came  to 
Hebron  to  mourn  for  Sarah,  and  to  weep  for  her. 
And  Abraham  stood  up  before  his  dead,  and  spake 
unto  the  sons  of  Heth,  saying :  'I  am  a  stranger  and 
a  sojourner  with  you.  Give  me  a  possession  of  a 
burying  place  with  you,  that  I  may  bury  my  dead 
out  of  my  sight.'"  Yet  how  the  note  in  that  very 
same  chapter  is  changed!  How  brief  and  blithe 
these  words!  "Then  again  Abraham  took  a  wife, 
and  her  name  was  Keturah."  This  is  the  life  of 
man.  The  very  best  men,  more  often  than  the  rest, 
after  the  loss  of  those  who  were  beloved  more  than 
life,  have  thus  sought  to  restore,  or  to  simulate  a 
condition  all  of  whose  blessedness  it  is  impossible  to 
relinquish. 

But  what  of  the  marriage  of  this  woman  who,  at 
sixty  years  of  age,  was  left  in  a  widowhood  perhaps 
more  desolate  than  if  she  had  had  a  right  to  the 
man  to  whom  she  had  surrendered  herself?  Upon 
her  face,  even  in  youth,  had  never  been  a  single 
trace  of  the  beauty  that  delights  men's  eyes.  Now 
she  was  wrinkled  with  age,  and  sickness,  and  sor 
row.  Can  it  be  believed  that  thus  broken  in  body, 
soul,  and  spirit,  she  hoped  to  have  her  youth  re- 


126  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE 

newed,  and  put  into  a  condition  which  it  had  never 
known  in  its  prime,  by  placing  orange  blossoms 
among  her  gray,  withered  locks,  arraying  herself  in 
nuptial  veil  and  vesture,  going  tottering  along  the 
aisle  of  St.  George's  Chapel  in  Hanover  Square  and 
having  the  symbolic  ring  put  upon  her  wrinkled  finger 
by  a  man  her  junior  by  many  years?  Had  she  be 
come  so  superannuated  as  not  to  know  that  old  De 
cember  can  neither  impart  nor  receive  the  sweet 
influences  of  the  young  May?  No.  In  her  case 
was  the  desire,  when  dying,  to  have  a  name  with 
which  to  descend  into  the  grave  other  than  that 
which  she  had  usurped  from  one  of  her  sex,  who, 
despite  all  else  that  she  had  forfeited,  was  en 
titled  to  that  until  death  should  put  an  end  to  the 
claim. 

Therefore  we  cannot  but  compassionate,  whenever 
we  reflect  upon  the  unhappy  career  of  Marian  Evans. 
Aside  from  gratitude  for  her  almost  matchless  crea 
tions,  we  must  be  touched  by  the  contemplation  of 
what  must  have  been  the  sadness  of  a  woman  who 
did  not  believe  that  happiness  was  to  be  had  in  mar 
ried  life,  who  had  had  no  experience  of  happiness 
without,  and  who,  although  without  ascertained  prin 
ciples  of  religious  faith,  and  with  an  ineffaceable 
blot  upon  her  own  life,  yet  shrank  from  imparting 
precepts  which  might  lead  others  to  ruin.  It  is 
pleasing  to  note  her  sympathy  with  every  form  of 


GEORGE    ELIOT  S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  127 

suffering  and  her  constant  desire  to  alleviate  it.  It 
was  as  if  she  would  make  all  possible  amends  for 
whatever  were  the  errors  of  her  own  life.  Under 
rating  both  the  blessedness  and  the  sacredness  of 
marriage,  it  was  impossible  for  her  to  describe  it 
otherwise  than  it  appeared  to  her  eyes.  Yet,  even 
if  unwittingly,  she  paid  reverence  to  that  estate  in 
teaching  that  there  was  no  escape  from  its  miseries 
on  this  side  of  the  grave.  She  made  her  husbands 
and  wives  dispute,  wrangle,  inflict,  suffer  and  endure 
until  death  had  put  an  end  both  to  infliction  and 
suffering.  Then,  at  last,  when  youth  and  health 
were  gone  and  when  what  had  been  plainness  of 
feature  had  lapsed  into  the  wrinkles  of  eld,  when 
she  had  laid  aside  her  work,  and  in  the  solitude  of 
her  spirit  looked  back  upon  the  past  and  forth  upon 
the  future,  it  is  touching  to  contemplate  how,  when 
aged,  tired,  alone,  she  yearned  for  an  honorable 
name  to  be  written  upon  her  tomb.  Louise  de 
Stael  concealed  from  the  world  the  marriage  of  her 
old  age,  both  because  she  was  afraid  of  the  ridicule 
and  of  any  subtraction  from  the  name  which  she 
had  made  so  renowned.  It  was  not  until  her  last 
will  and  testament  was  opened  that  men  knew  that 
she  had  taken  to  her  aged  bosom  a  boy  of  the 
French  infantry  when  the  ridicule  that  followed 
could  make  no  impression  upon  the  "dull,  cold  ear 
of  death."  How  unlike  the  Englishwoman,  who 


128  GEORGE    ELIOT'S    MARRIED     PEOPLE. 

piteously  hoped  that  the  blessing  she  had  not  sought 
in  life  might  descend  upon  her  grave!  To  bind  her 
self  in  old  age  with  the  bond  she  had  desecrated, 
without  hope  or  expectation  of  what  impels  the 
young  to  take  its  obligations  seemed  to  her  the  only 
apology  she  could  make  for  the  wrong  done  to  her 
self  and  the  world. 

It  was  well  for  Marian  Evans  that  the  man  who 
had  ruined  her  life  died  before  her.  His  death 
overwhelmed  her  with  grief  which  showed  the  single 
ness  of  her  affection;  but  it  afforded  opportunities 
for  self-communings  of  whose  salutary  results  she 
was  in  extremest  need.  He  had  never  been  able  to 
seduce  her  from  all  religious  conviction,  and  now, 
when  his  voice  was  no  longer  heard,  and  his  ex 
ample  was  taken  away,  perhaps  her  more  awakened 
concern  for  her  own  spiritual  being  was  enhanced 
by  regretful  memories  of  the  wrongs  done  by  him 
to  which  she  was  party,  without  condonement  of 
which,  even  by  repentance,  he  had  gone  to  his  last 
account.  The  marriage  of  herself  to  another  man 
would  at  least  seem  to  consummate  the  severance 
that  death  had  already  made.  If  such  things  were 
so,  if  such  was  her  motive  for  this  last  action,  in 
it  there  is  a  pathos  like  that  when  (Edipus  of 
Thebes,  alter  the  suicide  of  Jocasta,  was  led  to 
Athens  where  he  was  to  "turn  the  goal  of  weari 
some  existence,"  when,  seated  in  the  grove  hard  by 


GEORGE    ELIOT  S    MARRIED     PEOPLE.  129 

the  temples  of  the  gods,  lifting  his  sightless  eyes 
towards  Heaven,  he  prayed  for  "some  accomplish 
ment  and  end  of  life." 


LOUISE,  BARONNE  DE  ST/EL- 
HOLSTEIN. 


A  MONO  all  women  of  letters  perhaps  Madame 
^••de  Stael  was  the  most  passionate  not  to  have 
avowedly  or  been  known  certainly  to  pass  beyond 
the  pale  of  honor.  She  seemed  to  have  loved  to 
live  near  the  line  of  licensed  and  unlicensed  exist 
ence,  with  some  yearning  for  the  latter  that  was  re 
strained  only  by  fear  of  punishment  for  offending 
the  former's  exactions.  With  her  mother,  Ma'am- 
selle  Curchod,  Gibbon  the  historian  fell  in  love 
while  he  was  a  student  at  Lausanne.  His  family 
not  liking  the  match,  he  gave  up  his  suit  and  re 
mained  a  bachelor.  The  damsel,  whether  spiteful 
or  less  sentimental,  was  married  to  Necker,  the 
banker,  who  was  to  become  famous  at  Paris  during 
the  period  of  the  Revolution,  Born  in  that  city  ( 1 766) 
never  was  one  more  a  Parisian  in  tastes,  habits,  and 
ideas,  than  Louise  Necker.  At  twelve  years  she 
was  a  grown  woman.  At  least  she  believed  herself 
so  to  be,  and  in  the  matters  of  culture,  experience, 
and  observation  she  was.  Her  girlhood  had  suf- 
130 


LOUISE,   BARONNE  DE   STAEL.  13! 

fered  from  the  disagreement  of  her  parents  regard 
ing  the  discipline  to  which  she  ought  to  be  subject 
ed.  The  mother  was  for  repressing,  the  father  for 
indulging  her  longings  for  freedom.  For  a  time 
the  former  prevailed;  but  it  being,  or  it  appearing 
that  rigor  was  hurtful  to  her  health,  this  was  relaxed 
more  and  more  until  finally  the  child  was  handed 
over  to  the  fullest  paternal  indulgence.  Ever  after 
wards,  while  she  seemed  to  care  for  her  mother  not 
at  all,  for  her  father  she  professed,  both  while  he  was 
living,  and  after  his  death,  an  affection  that  some 
times  seemed  rather  ridiculous.  While  she  was  yet 
low  in  her  teens,  at  their  salon  in  Paris, 
"Were  it  by  accident  or  destene," 

was  a  meeting  between  the  mother  and  her  old  lov 
er.  Nothing  could  have  exceeded  the  self-possess 
ion  of  the  former  as  she  essayed  to  exhibit  how 
much  better,  as  she  believed,  she  had  married  than 
at  one  time  had  been  expected.  On  the  contrary 
Gibbon  was  much  embarrassed.  Perhaps  it  was 
only  the  awkwardness  wrought  by  retirement  from 
female  society.  At  all  events,  so  it  was  said,  the 
daughter,  out  of  romantic  compassion,  offered,  with 
bestowal  of  her  own  hand,  to  compensate  for  his 
disappointment.  Whereupon  the  old  bachelor,  made 
yet  less  at  his  ease,  rose,  made  some  search  for  his 
hat,  and,  as  soon  as  he  found  it,  took  himself  away 
to  return  there  never  again. 


132  LOUISE,   BARONNE  DE   STAEL. 

The  girl  soon  learned  to  love  Rousseau,  and,  if 
she  had  been  a  boy,  there  is  no  telling  the  lengths 
to  which  she  would  have  rushed  in  the  indulgence 
of  whatever  she  saw  to  be  coveted  in  that  city  so 
full  of  objects  of  desire.  But  she  was  a  girl,  and 
when  she  had  come  to  her  twentieth  year,  she  saw 
fit  to  marry  with  a  man  advanced  in  life,  wealthy 
and  titled,  stipulating  that  she  was  never  to  go 
with  him  to  his  native  country  (Sweden)  and  with 
tacit  understanding  that,  while  tolerating  his 
caresses,  she  was  to  think,  speak  and  do  as  she 
pleased. 

Marriages  avowedly  or  well  understood  to  be  for 
convenience,  at  their  very  start,  do  not  give  prom 
ise  of  great  conjugal  felicity.  It  may  not  be  very 
surprising  how  men  can  enter  into  them;  but  it  is 
always  to  be  wondered  at  when  a  woman  can  dis 
pose  of  herself  in  that  way.  No  happiness  was  to 
spring  from  this  union  along  with  the  children  who 
were  engendered  by  it.  Finally  a  separation  took 
place,  and  after  the  decease  of  the  aged  husband, 
the  widowr,  then  forty-six  and  an  invalid,  contracted 
with  one  who  was  little  more  than  a  boy,  another 
marriage  of  which  she  was  so  ashamed  that  it  was 
kept  secret  until  after  her  death. 

The  prevailing  elements  in  the  being  of  this  illus 
trious  woman  were  sentiment  and  ambition,  both  of 
which  were  so  passionate  as  to  keep  her  in  acondi- 


LOUISE,   BARONNE   DE   STAEL.  133 

tion  of  ever  unsatisfied  desire.  Living  in  the  midst 
of  the  Revolution,  she  contracted  a  love  for  politics, 
which  never  could  be  subdued.  Living  in  an  age  of 
fiery  passion,  there  cannot  be  a  doubt  that  she  con 
stantly  fretted  under  constraints  which  marriage 
and  her  sex  had  imposed  upon  her  action,  and  that 
she  pined  for  the  freedom  of  those  who  had  resolved 
to  be  free  even  to  licentiousness.  Her  first  literary 
venture  was  a  foolish  eulogium  upon  Rousseau  who, 
fortunately  for  mankind,  was  as  disgusting  in  his 
manner  of  living,  as  the  sentiment  in  his  writings 
was  exquisitely  sublimated.  To  what  extent  were 
carried  the  loves  which  she  indulged  was  not  cer 
tainly  known.  But  it  was  an  open  secret  that  she 
loved  Talleyrand  more  than  she  loved  her  husband, 
and  that  she  was  overwhelmed  with  anger  and 
shame  when  he  thrust  her  aside  and  in  her  place 
substituted  the  younger  and  more  beautiful  Madame 
Grant. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  her  yieldings,  however  far  these 
extended,  to  the  consuming  passions  of  her  being, 
her  cold  regard  for  her  husband,  her  eager  fondness 
for  society  and  for  politics,  she  was  a  very  great,  and 
in  the  main,  a  sincere  woman.  She  believed  that 
she  had  the  right  to  show,  perhaps  to  avow  to  others 
her  slight  regard  for  a  dotard  who  had  taken  her 
with  no  acknowledgement  or  promise  of  conjugal 
affection.  She  let  him  become  father  of  her  chil- 


134  LOUISE,   BARONNE   DE   STAEL. 

dren,  as  a  mettlesome  female  of  any  race,  in  want 
of  more  fit  and  exalted  union,  yields  reluctant,  dis 
gusted  assent  to  the  perpetuation  cf  a  breed  which 
she  foresees  that,  half  despising,  she  will  the  other 
half  neglect,  and  kept  herself  buffeting  amid  the 
stormy  billows  that  were  within  and  around  her. 
Inheriting  the  democratic  sentiments  of  her  father, 
she  made  such  fierce  hostility  to  the  usurpations  of 
Bonaparte  that  he  banished  her,  first  from  Paris, 
then  from  France.  The  exile  came  near  breaking  her 
heart.  In  the  midst  of  her  sufferings  from  this  source 
she  wrote  Delphine. 

True  to  life  as  this  book  is,  it  is  not  one  for  the 
young  of  either  sex  to  read  with  profit.  The  loves 
described  by  the  author  are  of  a  kind  to  be  unhap 
py.  Disappointment  and  resentment  follow  the 
violations  of  men's  vows.  Delphine  was  partly  an 
attempt  to  be  like  La  Nouvelle  Heloise  of  Rousseau 
with  the  softening  that  a  female  hand  could  impart. 
Its  reception  led  to  the  coming  of  Corinne.  The 
author  had  drank  deep  of  disappointment  which  she 
would  have  liked  to  believe  that  she  had  had,  even 
if  she  had  not.  Then  she  had  travelled  much  in 
the  fairer  softer  regions  of  the  South.  There  is 
wonderful  genius  in  this  book.  The  marvellous  gift 
of  improvisation  belonging  to  some  of  the  Italians 
she  possessed  to  a  great  degree.  Corinne  was  a 
woman  too  sensitive,  too  spirited,  too  passionate  to 


LOUISE,   BARONNE   DE  STAEL.  135 

be  made  content  with  the  licensed  honorable  love 
of  one  man.  Such  a  woman  must  be  made  to  love 
in  conditions  wherein  love's  lawful  fruition  is  too 
tame  for  entire  satisfaction;  she  must  spend  the 
prime  of  her  youth  in  lawless  indulgences  and  long 
ings  for  the  impossible,  and  rush  to  premature  death 
consumed  by  the  fiery  flames  which  she  coiOd  never 
even  wish  to  subdue.  In  all  literature  there  is  noth 
ing  more  beautiful  than  some  passages  occurring  in 
this  novel.  Without  doubt  while  some  of  them 
were  being  indited,  tears  were  streaming  from  the 
eyes  of  the  author  who,  though  conscious  of  the 
power  of  feeling  the  most  consuming  passion,  had 
not  one  upon  whom  in  its  fulness  to  lavish  it.  That 
was  a  terrific  cry  uttered  by  her  in  one  of  the  per 
iods  of  her  sense  of  desolation  "Jamais,  jamais,  je 
ne  serais  jamais  aime  comme  faime!"  It  was  the 
keynote  to  the  wailings  of  all  her  women-lovers. 
Now  when  such  cries  come  from  the  mouth  of  a 
married  woman,  who  has  married  of  her  own  free 
will,  and  who  has  children  growing  up  by  her  side, 
what  shall  be  said  of  her  fitness  to  teach  mankind 
lessons  from  the  novel,  the  gift  to  teach  wherefrom 
was  bestowed  with  benign  intent  by  the  Creator. 
Not  like  the  Nouvelle  Heloise  of  Rousseau,  whose 
individual  coarseness  belied  the  exquisite  aspirations 
which  he  claimed  to  have,  not  like  the  Elective 
Affinities  of  Goethe,  so  openly  insulting  to  the  sense 


136  LOUISE,   BARONNE  DE  STAEL. 

of  decency  and  honest  fear,  not  like  the  general 
libertinism  of  Voltaire,  the  culmination  of  whose 
audacious  grossness  perhaps  was  his  jeering  debate 
with  another  man  little  known  to  him  regarding  the 
paternity  of  a  child  whose  mother  had  abandoned 
herself  to  both,  her  writings  tend  insidiously  to  make 
the  young  of  both  sexes  unsatisfied  with  the  love 
that  is  allowed  writhin  appointed  bounds,  and  they 
diminish  in  their  minds  things  and  institutions  time- 
honored  and  consecrated.  Unhappy  always,  in 
childhood,  girlhood,  married  life,  widowhood,  again 
married  life,  amid  all  she  was  yet  more  vain  than 
unhappy.  It  is  curious  to  consider  that  very  ex 
asperation  of  vanity  leading  her  often  into  action 
that  made  her  an  object  of  irrepressible  ridicule. 
Her  fame,  even  while  living,  went  beyond  that  of 
any  woman  in  modern  times,  yet  her  eagerness  kept 
her  from  being  satisfied  with  any  measure  of  success 
or  laudation. 

But  the  genius  of  this  woman !  and  the  eloquence  I 
In  the  eloquence  of  the  pen  she  is  almost  without 
a  rival.  So  in  the  thoroughness  and  acuteness  of 
her  historical  researches.  That  is  a  wonderful  work 
"De  la  L  literature  Consideree  dans  les  Rapports 
avec  les  Institutions  Sociales."  It  is  almost  incred 
ible  with  what  ingenuity  she  traced  the  history  of 
Literature  from  the  earliest  times  of  which  any  rec 
ord  was  made  through  the  Greek,  the  Roman,  the 


LOUISE,   BARONNE  DE  STAEL.  137 

Middle  Age,  the  Italian,  the  German,  the  English, 
the  French.  The  great  purpose  which  she  had  in 
view,  chimerical  as  it  was,  it  is  most  entertaining 
to  see  how  eloquently  she  labored  to  establish.  Her 
theory  was  the  ultimate  Perfectibility  of  mankind 
by  the  general  diffusion  of  knowledge.  Readers, 
even  those  not  at  all  given  to  enthusiasm^  cannot 
but  feel  some  of  the  rapture  that  beamed  in  her 
breast  while  making  her  great  impassioned  plea. 
She  came  not  far  from  being  a  great  historian.  She 
had  a  genius  for  politics.  In  different  conditions 
she  might  have  been  a  very  great  poet.  But  the  en 
thusiasm  that  was  ever  burning  in  her  breast  from 
childhood  to  death  was  continually  leading  her 
astray  in  her  opinions,  her  language,  and  her  de 
portment. 

It  was  not  strange  that  such  a  spirit  would  dream 
of  the  perfectibility  of  mankind  by  human  agencies. 
Reared  with  indefinite  notions  of  religious  obliga 
tions,  claiming  and  feeling  the  right  to  accept  and 
reject  what  she  pleased  among  the  teachings  of  the 
Church,  ever  yearning  for  things  unattainable,  in 
finite  in  desires,  unteachable  by  experience,  exasp 
erated  by  disappointments,  no  wonder  that  she 
dreamed  and  cried  out  in  her  dreamings  of  a  state 
wherein  the  discordant  things  in  this  fallen  life  which 
her  fancies  intensified  might  be  adjusted  and  a  gold 
en  age  come  again  upon  the  world.  Of  all  dream- 


138  LOUISE,   BARONNE  DE  STAEL. 

ers  they  are  most  extravagant  and  vain  who,  en 
dowed  with  extraordinary  genius,  either  are  not 
Christians,  or  feel  themselves  to  be  authorized  in 
terpreters  of  the  will  of  Heaven  outside  and  inside 
of  its  revealings.  The  more  eminently  gifted  are 
such,  the  more  daring  asperations  they  conceive  for 
the  ken  of  the  seer  and  the  voice  of  the  prophet. 
All  except  enthusiasts  know  that  the  development 
of  virtue  has  never  kept  pace  with  mere  culture  of 
the  understanding,  and  only  brief  reflection  is  enough 
to  convince  a  thoughtful  mind  of  the  truth  of  that 
saying;  "far  more  noble  is  that  learning  which 
flows  from  above  from  the  divine  influence  than  that 
which  is  laboriously  acquired  by  the  industry  of 
man."  No  man  nor  no  woman  ever  grows  better 
purely  by  development  of  the  understanding.  Some 
of  those  most  abandoned  to  evil  doing,  among  wom 
en  as  among  men,  have  been  gifted  with  preeminent 
genius,  and  had  most  elaborate  culture  in  the  midst 
of  abundant  opportunities.  Sodom  was  less  cul 
tured  than  Capernaum,  Gomorrah  than  Chorazin. 
The  modern  cities  had  been  exalted  to  Heaven,  yet 
for  their  atrocities,  of  which  the  older  would  have 
repented  in  dust  and  ashes,  they  were  cast  into  hell. 
It  is  not  the  culture  of  the  understanding  alone  that 
is  to  save  from  ruin  mankind  in  the  aggregate  or  the 
individual,  that  is  to  put  an  end  to  oppression,  and 
war,  and  ingratitude  and  dishonor,  and  neglect,  and 


LOUISE,   BARONNE  DE   STAEL.  139 

contumely,  and  wrong  doing  of  every  sort.  It  is 
the  cultivation  of  the  spirit  under  such  guidance  as 
Heaven  has  appointed,  and  it  is  a  culture  within  as 
easy  attainment  of  the  simple  and  weak  as  of  the 
gifted  and  powerful.  For  it  comes  from  God,  who 
sometimes  in  "an  instant  elevates  the  humble  mind 
to  comprehend  more  reasons  of  the  Eternal  truth 
than  if  any  one  had  studied  ten  years  in  the 
Schools." 

Great  as  are  the  historical  writings  of  Madame  de 
Stael  they  have  the  same  infirmity  as  those  of  her 
imagination.  Sentiment  and  passion  go  in  advance 
of  probability  and  reason.  In  Corinne  are  some 
things  as  beautiful  and  as  powerful  as  ever  came 
from  the  impassioned  tongue  of  Sappho,  whom  the 
Greeks  named  The  Tenth  Muse.  Yet,  after  all  the 
display  of  resistless  passion  the  work  falls  far  short 
of  the  best  purposes  of  fiction.  It  is  an  outrage 
upon  conjugal  honor,  the  all  consuming  passion  of 
Corinne  for  Oswald,  a  passion  become  only  more 
consuming  when,  false  to  the  behests  of  manhood, 
he  was  married  to  another.  As  outrageous  was  the 
returned  passion  of  the  false  lover  and  false  hus 
band.  More  outrageous  than  both  was  making  the 
lawful  wife  go-between  with  her  husband  and  the  wom 
an  whom  he  had  destroyed.  None,  or  little  of  value 
is  in  the  lesson  of  Corinne's  end.  Only  when  she 
saw  death  standing  by  her  bed-side  did  she  ask  for 


140  LOUISE,   BARONNE  DE  STAEL. 

the  image  of  this  lover  to  be  taken  from  her 
breast  and  its  place  occupied  by  that  of  her  offend 
ed  Lord. 

Madame  de  Stael  might  have  been  called  the 
greatest  of  her  sex  if  she  had  had  a  sounder  judg 
ment  and  well  directed  religious  principles.  Her 
own  career  ought  to  have  been  enough  to  convince 
her  that  her  speculations  regarding  human  perfecti 
bility  were  illusory.  When  a  girl,  of  her  own  free 
will,  she  had  been  married  to  an  old  man  whom  she 
did  not  love  and  whom  she  grew  to  despise.  After 
wards  and  when  past  middle  age,  she  was  married 
to  a  boy  with  whom  she  consorted  in  secret  in  fear 
of  the  ridicule  which  discovery  as  she  feared  would 
have  brought  upon  her.  It  is  a  sad  life  to  contem 
plate.  She  was  not  a  bad  woman.  Her  impulses 
were  high,  but  she  could  never  learn  to  control  them 
by  the  rules  of  religion  or  those  of  reason.  Her 
extremest  desires  were  for  things,  some  unlawful, 
others  impossible  to  human  attainment.  With  af 
fections  most  intense,  their  fruition  was  such  as  to 
her  own  eyes  seemed  pitiful  and  contemptible.  Vain 
as  it  was,  almost  childish  that  cry  hereinbefore 
quoted,  it  was  an  index  to  that  interior  being  which, 
throughout  all  its  changing  conditions,  was  racked 
by  passions  and  tumultuous  strivings. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  the  life  of  Louise  de 
Stael  with  that  of  Marian  Evans;  one,  the  daughter 


LOUISE,   BARONNE   DE   STAEL.  141 

of  wealth,  title,  power,  spoiled  in  childhood,  keeping 
herself  spoiled  amid  all  the  phases  of  good  and  evil 
fortune,  regardful  only  of  the  fine,  the  influential, 
the  magnificent,  despising  society  except  that  of  the 
Court  and  the  elite:  the  other,  child  of  an  obscure 
father,  who,  when  she  was  made  motherless,  under 
stood  not  her  gifts,  who,  if  he  had  understood, 
would  have  set  upon  them  no  value  beyond  the  pe 
cuniary  gains  which  their  exercise  might  be  calcu 
lated  to  bring;  with  access  to  no  society  except  that 
into  which  the  services  which  she  was  found  compe 
tent  to  render  chanced  to  throw  her,  even  when  il 
lustrious,  confined  within  that  made  by  those  who 
sought  her  for  the  sake  of  acquaintance  with  the 
greatest  woman  of  her  time,  apologizing  to  them 
selves  for  the  vanity  which  led  them  to  desire  it. 
One  yearning  for  the  felicity  which  comes  from  sat 
isfied  love,  not  content,  nay,  rather  disgusted  with 
that  which  only  wedded  life  is  permitted  to  impart, 
because  of  its  having  no  temptations,  risks,  and 
dangers :  the  other,  with  yearnings  as  powerful  and 
painful,  without  social  influence,  her  face  and  form 
having  neither  beauty  nor  comeliness,  yet,  rather 
than  have  not  love  at  all,  taking  the  second  and  un 
licensed  of  one  whose  first  had  been  betrayed,  and 
showing  to  this  a  fidelity  of  which  the  French  woman 
knew  little  of  the  worth.  One  regarding  Religion 
as  a  judge  watching  and  waiting  to  condemn  every 


142  LOUISE,   BARONNE  DE   STAEL. 

enjoyment  beyond  its  own  measured,  stale  allow 
ances  :  the  other  fearing  God,  and  ever  trembling 
while  partaking  of  what  she  must  doubt  but  could 
not  quite  believe  to  have  been  forbid.  One  seeking 
to  advance  the  high  to  more  exalted  heights :  the 
other  concerned  mostly  with  the  lowly,  wishing  that 
she  might  lift  them  into  better  conditions.  One 
elate  with  praises  of  the  world,  yet  feeling  that  they 
were  less  than  she  deserved :  the  other  shrinking 
from  the  notoriety  which  she  had  attained,  and  as 
tounded  by  the  impressions  which  her  own  creations 
had  made!  One  when  grown  old,  taking  to  hus 
band  a  beardless  youth,  expecting  this  new  wifehood 
to  compensate  for  the  old  which  at  its  very  incipi- 
ency  had  palled :  the  other,  more  than  a  widow  at 
the  death  of  the  companion,  whom  she  had  not  the 
right  to  keep,  yielding  saddest  assent  to  him  who 
proposed  an  honorable  name  with  which  the  journ 
als  of  the  time  might  announce  her  answer  to  the 
summons  of  death  known  to  be  near.  One 
ashamed  of  the  name  to  be  put  upon  her  grave :  the 
other  looking  forward  to  that  upon  her  own  with 
humble  thankfulness. 


PRE-AMERICAN  PHILOSOPHY. 


TT  touches  a  thoughtful  Christian  mind  with  some 
*•  pathos  to  study  the  philosophy  of  the  ancients. 
In  want  of  inspired  authoritative  teaching,  the 
human  intellect,  never  greater  nor  more  earnest, 
looked  alternately  outward  and  inward,  and  sought 
eagerly  to  find  the  origin  and  the  ultimate  end  of 
man  and  what  were  the  things  most  suited  to  the 
purposes  of  his  being.  We  may  compassionate  but 
never  can  condemn  the  speculations  of  the  physi 
ologists,  Thales  upon  Water,  Anaximenes  upon  Air, 
nor  of  the  mathematicians  with  Pythagoras  at  their 
head,  whom  tradition  made  to  tame  with  a  word  the 
Daunian  bear,  to  be  heard  lecturing  at  Metapontum 
and  Tauromenium  on  the  same  day  and  hour,  to  be 
saluted  by  the  river-god  while  crossing  his  waters, 
and  to  hear  the  harmonies  of  the  spheres.  There 
was  modesty  and  there  was  melancholy  in  the 
spirits  of  these  most  gifted  men.  Those  preceding 
the  last-named  had  been  called  Wise  Men.  But 
Pythagoras,  greater  than  all  his  predecessors,  would 
have  an  humbler  title.  There  is  much  modesty  in 
the  following  words: 

'43 


144  PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

"This  life  may  be  compared  to  the  Olympic  games.  For  as  in  this 
assembly  some  seek  glory  and  the  crowns,  some  by  the  purchase  or 
by  the  sale  of  merchandise  seek  gain,  and  others,  more  noble  than 
either,  go  there  neither  for  gain  nor  for  applause,  but  solely  to  en 
joy  this  wonderful  spectacle  and  to  see  and  know  all  that  passes;  we, 
in  the  same  manner,  qxiit  our  country,  which  is  heaven,  and  come 
into  the  world,  which  is  an  assembly  where  many  work  for  profit, 
many  for  gain,  and  where  there  are  but  few  who,  despising  avarice 
and  vanity,  study  nature.  It  is  these  last  whom  I  call  Philosophers; 
for  as  there  is  nothing  more  noble  than  to  be  a  spectator  without 
any  personal  interest,  so  in  this  life  the  contemplation  and  knowl 
edge  of  nature  are  infinitely  more  honorable  than  any  other  appli 
cation.1" 

Herein  we  behold  a  spirit  searching  for  wisdom,  not 
for  its  practical  uses,  but  for  its  own  sake.  There 
fore  he  called  himself  a  Lover  of  Wisdom,  to  whom 
the  noblest  exercise  of  the  understanding  was  con 
templation. 

It  is  interesting  to  follow  the  development  of  phil 
osophy  through  the  Eleatics.  Sadder  yet  these  verses 
of  Xenophanes : 

"Certainly  no  mortal  yet  knew,  and  ne'er  shall  there  be  one 
Knowing  both  well,  the  Gods  and  the  All,  whose  nature  we  treat  of; 
For  when  by  chance  he  at  times  may  utter  the  true  and  the  perfect, 
He  wists  not  unconscious;  for  error  is  spread  over  all  things." 

Then  come  the  independent  speculators,  from 
Heraclitus  to  Democritus,  of  whom 

"One  pitied,  one  condemned  the  woful  times; 
One  laughed  at  follies,  and  one  wept  o'er  crimes" 

—illustrating  how  "life  is  a  comedy  to  those  who 
think,  a  tragedy  to  those  who  feel."  To  the  laugh 
ing  philosopher  succeed  the  Sophists,  who,  tired  of 
the  problem  of  human  life,  acknowledged  to  be  in- 


PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  145 

capable  of  solution,  turned  away  from  it  and  devoted 
themselves,  as  if  grimly  to  compensate  or  revenge  for 
the  continued  elusion  of  truth,  to  the  development 
of  the  art  of  disputation. 

And  then  Socrates,  who  seems  to  us  to  have  been 
sent  into  the  world  to  convince  it  that  the  most 
consummate  genius,  unaided  by  Revelation,  is  in 
competent  by  searching  to  find  out  God.  What  a 
career  was  led  by  this,  the  wisest,  humblest,  bravest, 
best  of  mankind !  How  did  he  yearn  for  Truth !  How 
did  he  pursue  her  ever-eluding  form,  through  heat 
and  cold,  in  hunger  and  rags,  loving  her  none  the 
less,  believing  in  her  none  the  less,  because  he  could 
never  find  out  the  exact  place  of  her  shrine.  His 
predecessors,  because  they  could  not  embrace  her, 
had  declared  her  to  be  a  phantom.  Not  so  Socra 
tes.  He  knew  that,  though  he  could  not  behold 
her,  she  was  around  and  near  him,  that  her  laws 
were  immutable  and  eternal,  and  that  to  obtain  her 
blessing  mankind  must  pray  without  ceasing.  Man 
kind  could  not  do  what  this  Silenus  (as  they  named 
him)  told  them  they  must  do  or  be  ruined,  and  so  they 
slew  him.  Never  was  a  death — a  death  of  a  mortal — 
more  inevitable.  Hear  what  his  lover  says,  the  bril 
liant  Alcibiades: 

"  I  stop  my  ears,  as  from  the  Sirens,  and  flee  away  as  fast  as  possi 
ble,  that  I  may  not  sit  do\yn  beside  him  and  grow  old  in  listening-  to 
his  talk;  for  this  man  has  reduced  me  to  feel  the  sentiment  of  shame, 
which  I  imagine  no  one  would  readily  believe  was  in  me;  he  alone 


146  PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

inspires  me  with  remorse  and  awe,  for  I  feel  in  his  presence  my  in 
capacity  of  refuting  what  he  says,  or  of  refusing  to  do  that  which 
he  directs;  but  when  I  depart  from  him  the  glory  which  the  multitude 
confers  overwhelms  me.  I  escape,  therefore,  and  hide  myself  from 
him,  and  when  I  see  him  I  am  overwhelmed  with  humiliation,  be 
cause  I  have  neglected  to  do  what  I  have  confessed  to  him  ought  to 
be  done;  and  often  and  often  have  I  wished  that  he  was  no  longer 
to  be  seen  among  men.  But  if  that  were  to  happen  I  well  know  that 
I  should  suffer  far  greater  pain;  so  that  where  I  can  turn,  or  what  I 
can  do  with  this  man,  I  know  not.  All  this  have  I  and  many  others 
suffered  from  the  pipings  of  this  satyr." 

The  career  of  Socrates  showed  the  highest  height 
to  which  the  human  understanding  could  reach. 
Sublime  indeed  was  that  height.  It  showed  also 
the  highest  height  of  human  virtue,  and  that,  too, 
was  sublime.  For  a  man  to  proclaim  the  supre 
macy  of  virtue  over  all  other  rules  of  human  life, 
to  teach  that  brave,  unswerving  adherence  to  justice 
was  not  only  the  most  precious  but  the  only  happi 
ness,  to  declare  that  only  those  are  unhappy  who 
are  not  just — these  of  themselves  prove  the  divine 
origin  of  mankind.  What  the  Sophists  declared  to 
be  a  phantom  he  worshipped  as  an  Existence,  not 
less  real  because  invisible  to  human  eyes;  and  some 
times  in  solemn  argumentation,  sometimes  in  irony 
that  burned  like  fire,  he  pursued  and  put  to  silence 
those  who  refused  to  pay  the  worship  that  was  ever 
pouring  from  his  heart.  In  this  wonderful  man  the 
human  conscience  also  performed  its  most  perfect 
work.  Had  he  been  a  Sophist  he  must  have  gone 
mad  from  despair.  In  moral  certitude — that  is,  in 


PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  147 

the  certitude  that  virtue  was  eternally  existent — he 
found  the  repose  for  his  soul,  that  had  hungered  and 
thirsted  to  attain  it.  Always  poor,  he  never  doubted 
the  acceptance  of  his  poor  sacrifices,  being  persuad 
ed  that  humility,  purity  and  piety  were  more  pleas 
ing  to  the  gods  than  when,  without  these,  their 
altars  were  overspread  with  costliest  gifts.  His 
prayers  were  not  for  the  things  which  himself 
might  have  chosen,  but  for  whatever  the  gods  knew 
it  was  good  for  him  to  receive.  Nothing  in  all 
times  can  excel  those  words  in  his  last  speech  to  his 
judges : 

"The  difficulty,  O  Athenians!  is  not  to  escape  from  death,  but  from 
guilt;  for  guilt  is  swifter  than  death  and  runs  faster.  And  now  I, 
being  old  and  slow  of  foot,  have  been  overtaken  by  Death,  the  slow 
er  of  the  two;  but  my  accusers,  who  are  brisk  and  vehement  by 
wickedness,  the  swifter.  ...  It  is  now  time  that  we  depart,  I  to  die, 
you  to  live;  but  which  has  the  better  destiny  isunknown  to  all  except 
the  God." 

And  so  they  slew  him.  A  people  made  blind  by  in 
terest  and  passion  cannot  see  and  cannot  endure  the 
excellent  greatness  of  such  a  man.  Had  not  even 
Alcibiades  expressed  the  wish  that  he  might  no  longer 
be  seen  amongst  men?  "Everywhere,"  says  Heine, 
"that  a  great  soul  gives  utterance  to  its  thoughts  there 
also  is  Golgotha."  And  so  they  slew  him.  He  had 
prayed  to  the  gods  all  during  his  life,  and  his  last 
words  were  a  prayer  to  the  gods. 

The  pupil  of  Socrates,  second  only  to  him  in  the 
greatness  of  renown,  Plato,  had  not  the  cheerfulness 


148  PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

of  his  master,  though  he  was  equally  devoted  to 
Truth  and  Immortality.  How  sad,  how  intensely 
melancholy  he  was  who  has  been  styled  "the  inheri 
tor  of  the  wisdom  of  his  age!"  How  beautiful  his 
theory  of  the  perfect  winged  chariots  of  the  gods, 
contrasted  with  those,  variously  imperfect,  of  man 
kind!  How  melancholy  the  repeated  failure  of  men 
in  placing  themselves  in  the  train  of  the  gods  and 
ever  journeying  along  with  them!  Like  Socrates, 
believing  that  man  came  from  heaven  and  has  it  in 
his  power  to  be  restored  thither,  his  pure,  solemn 
soul  was  ever  unhappy  at  man's  persistent  oblivi- 
ousness  or  disregard  of  the  Real  Existences  before 
seen  and  known  in  his  native  country.  In  Beauty, 
for  instance  (ro  naXov]  some  of  his  thoughts  and 
words  are  much  like  those  of  the  Prophets  and 
Evangelists.  What  unites  the  human  soul  to  God  is 
Love,  and  Love  is  the  longing  of  the  human  soul  for 
Beauty. 

"But  it  is  not  easy  for  us  to  call  to  mind  what  the}'  saw  there"" 
[whilst  in  Heaven,  before  their  human  birth] — "those  especially 
which  saw  that  region  for  a  short  time  only,  and  those  which,  having 
fallen  to  the  earth,  were  so  unfortunate  as  to  be  turned  to  injustice, 
and  consequent  oblivion  of  the  sacred  things  which  were  seen  by 
them  in  their  former  state.  Few,  therefore,  remain  who  are  adequate 
to  the  recollection  of  those  things." 

After  some  observations  about  temperance,  justice, 
etc.,  he  says: 

"But  Beauty  was  not  only  most  splendid  when  it  was  seen  by  us 
forming  part  of  the  heavenly  possession  or  choir,  but  here  also  the 


PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  149 

likeness  of  it  comes  to  us  through  the  most  acute  and  clear  of  our 
senses,  that  of  sight,  and  with  a  splendor  which  no  other  of  the  ter 
restrial  images  of  super-celestial  existences  possess.  They,  then, 
who  are  not  fresh  from  heaven,  or  who  have  been  corrupted,  are  not 
vehemently  impelled  towards  that  Beauty  which  is  aloft  when  they 
see  that  upon  earth  which  is  called  by  its  name;  they  do  not,  there 
fore,  venerate  and  worship  it,  but  give  themselves  up  to  physical 
pleasure  after  the  manner  of  a  quadruped." 

Sublime  yet  touching  his  doctrine  that  the  Good 
(TO  dyaBdv)  is  GOD,  who  is  invisible,  while  Beauty, 
Truth,  and  others  are  his  attributes.  These  we  may 
see,  but  the  Good  never,  but  can  know  it  only  by 
its  attributes.  The  great  desire  of  Plato's  heart  was 
to  see  mankind  live  in  a  manner  like  the  gods,  and 
his  soul  grew  ever  more  and  more  sad  because  of  its 
continued  disappointment. 

Aristotle,  the  most  learned  of  mankind,  with  little 
thought  of  ethics,  bestowed  himself  mainly  to  physics 
and  metaphysics,  and  paved  the  way  to  the  Sceptics 
and  the  Epicureans,  the  former  doubting  the  exist 
ence  of  truth  because  of  its  undiscoverable  criter 
ion,  and  the  latter  endeavoring  to  solace  disappoint 
ment  with  magnifying  the  good  of  pleasure  and  pur 
suing  it.  Not  that  the  Epicurean  philosophers 
practised  or  inculcated  either  debauchery  or  intem 
perance.  That  was  a  sincere  inscription  at  the  en 
trance  of  their  garden :  "The  hospitable  keeper  of 
this  mansion,  where  you  will  find  pleasure  the  high 
est  good,  will  present  you  liberally  with  barley-cakes 
and  water  fresh  from  the  spring.  The  gardens  will 


150  PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

not  provoke  your  appetite  by  artificial  dainties,  but 
satisfy  it  with  natural  supplies.  Will  you  not  be  well 
entertained?" 

It  is  very  interesting  to  study  the  histories  of  the 
Epicureans  and  their  rivals  and  enemies,  the  Stoics, 
by  whom  they  suffered  from  misrepresentations  which 
by  the  majority  of  mankind  are  believed  to  this 
day.  The  times  were  favorable  to  two  just  such  rival 
sects.  The  glories  of  Athens  were  departing.  Greece 
was  fast  getting  to  be 

"Living  Greece  no  more." 

Epicurus  and  Zeno,  both  good  men,  revering  the 
name  of  Socrates,  looked  upon  the  decay  of  civili 
zation  with  different  eyes.  The  former  would  con 
sole  himself  with  the  search  and  attainment  of  what 
ever  pleasures  were  attainable,  but  always  with  the 
purpose  of  temperate  use.  To  him  there  was  no 
good,  not  even  pleasure,  either  in  evil  indulgences 
or  in  the  intemperate  use  of  those  that  were  good. 
See  how  often  Horace,  a  disciple,  commends  econo 
my,  temperance,  and  other  virtues.  How  in  that 
most  touching  of  his  odes, 

u  Eheu  fugaces  Posthume,  Posthume," 

he  commends  to  his  opulent  friend  thoughts  of  the 
tomb,  over  which,  alone  of  all  the  trees  in  his  gar 
den,  the  cypress  neglected  in  life,  will  stand. 
Pleasure,  but  pleasure  not  too  eagerly  pursued,  and 


PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  151 

especially  not  intemperately  indulged,  was  the  rule 
of  Epicurus.  Yet  when  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  is 
the  rule  of  life,  effeminacy  and  intemperance  must 
ensue  among  the  most.  It  was,  therefore,  a  noble 
purpose  when  Zeno,  the  father  of  the  Stoics,  with 
sorrow  for  the  general  decay  of  Grecian  manhood, 
and  indignant  with  the  men  of  culture  who  merely 
counselled  every  possible  avoidance  of  pain,  under 
took  to  restore  that  manhood  which  he  saw  depart 
ing  from  his  countrymen  and  taking  its  abode  with 
the  barbarians  who  had  built  their  city  upon  the 
banks  of  the  Tiber.  Zeno  was  as  earnest  and  sol 
emn  a  preacher  as  Socrates  or  Plato.  Yet,  though 
he  derided  the  softness  of  the  Epicureans,  he  could 
not  endure  the  railings,  the  rags,  the  indecenies  of 
the  Cynics.  So  he  formulated  his  own  doctrine, 
"  Live  harmoniously  with  Nature."  Contemning 
effeminacy,  inactivity,  and  mere  silent,  moody 
speculation,  he  urged  to  untiring  activity,  in  whose 
career,  if  perils  and  pains  appeared,  as  they  must, 
to  meet  them  with  courage  and  ignore  them  by  en 
durance.  He  taught  that  the  intellect,  which  was 
divine,  should  despise  whatever  interfered  with  its 
legitimate  work,  whether  that  was  pleasing  or  pain 
ful;  that  corporeal  senses  should  be  and  could  be 
held  under  control  by  the  intellect,  and  thus  it  could 
and  would  march  onward  along  the  highway  of 
freedom  and  virtue. 


152  PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

But  manhood  was  passing  away  from  the  Greeks. 
The  disciples  of  Zeno  among  his  own  people  were 
to  be  few :  the  many  rose  among  the  Romans.  A 
great  man  and  a  good  was  Zeno ;  but  what  a  mourn 
ful  commentary  on  the  doctrines  he  taught,  to  read 
that,  when  at  ninety-eight  years  of  age  he  was 
writhing  under  the  pain  of  a  fractured  limb,  dis 
gusted,  he  strangled  himself  with  a  rope! — a  mourn 
ful  example,  destined  to  be  imitated  many  times  in 
both  nations,  especially  in  the  one  which,  though 
foreign  to  the  great  teacher,  was  most  studious  and 
fond  of  his  teachings.  For  the  Greeks  were  gentle 
as  they  were  brave,  and  their  greatest  heroes  had 
wept  as  freely  as  they  had  fought  with  the  courage 
of  the  gods.  Tenderness  found  little  place  with  the 
rude  people  across  the  Adriatic,  and  so  the  Stoa 
was  removed  from  Athens  and  had  its  most  numer 
ous  discipleship  in  Rome.  An  anecdote  is  told  of 
the  behavior  of  the  elder  Cato  when  Carneades, 
the  leader  of  the  New  Academy,  came  to  Rome. 
On  his  first  appearance  before  the  Stoic  censor  the 
latter's  convictions  were  shaken ;  on  the  next  day, 
when  the  Greek,  in  ridicule  of  the  Stoic's  great  doc 
trine  of  common  sense,  refuted  his  own  arguments  of 
the  previous  interview,  the  auditor  persuaded  the 
senate  to  send  back  Carneades  to  his  native  coun 
try.  Not  that  great  teachers  were  to  arise  in 
Rome ;  for  Rome,  having  conquered  Greece  in  arms, 


PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  153 

was  taken  captive  by  Greece  in  arts,  among  which 
the  Stoic  creed  was  best  suited  to  the  energetic 
activities  of  the  victor.  But  men  who  were  actors, 
not  thinkers  merely,  who  were  statesmen,  not  philos 
ophers,  learning  from  Athens,  learned  mostly  the  Stoic 
creed  and  practised  its  precepts,  from  Cato  to  Mar 
cus  Antoninus. 

It  is  pleasing  to  contemplate  the  lingering  that 
philosophy  made  around  the  fallen  capital  of  Greece. 
It  must  in  time  depart.  Its  first  new  resting-place 
was  at  Alexandria,  where  Philo  the  Jew — reason 
alone  having  been  found  insufficient  for  man's  intel 
lectual  and  spiritual  wants — brought  in  the  alliance 
of  Oriental  mysticism,  and,  more  important  yet, 
that  of  faith.  He  was  the  first  to  announce  that 
science,  in  its  most  important  being,  was  the  gift  of 
God.  The  name  he  imparted  to  it  was  Faith,  and 
the  faithtul  performance  of  its  behests  was  called 
Piety.  Then  came  on  the  controversy  between  the 
Jew  and  the  teachers  of  the  Neo-Platonic  school, 
which  also  was  domiciled  at  Alexandria.  These 
men  sought  to  revive  whatever  was  possible  of  the 
ideas  of  the  founder  of  the  Academy.  He  had,  in 
deed,  seemed  almost  to  approximate  the  faith 
announced  by  Philo,  if  not  as  to  reason,  at  least 
as  to  virtue,  which  he  maintained  was  not  a  thing 
for  the  intellect  of  man  to  discover,  but  a  gift  of  the 
Creator.  The  Jew  applied  this  definition  to  science 


154  PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

as  well,  and  so  in  his  hands  philosophy  became  the 
ology.  Henceforth  the  combat  is  between  Reason 
and  Faith.  In  the  fulness  of  time  Christianity  was 
born. 

And  now  the  victory,  humanly  speaking,  was  the 
more  speedily  certain  when  we  contrast  the  benign 
ity  and  the  universality  of  the  Christian  faith  with 
the  exclusiveness  and  the  frequent  inhumanity  of 
philosophy,  as  well  as  its  incertitude  and  its  contra 
dictions.  What  had  been  left  of  philosophy  that 
was  not  sceptical  professed  to  hold  in  contempt  the 
body  of  man  with  its  capacities  for  pleasure  and 
for  pain.  Some  of  the  later  philosophers  had  gone 
to  the  length  of  expressing  their  disgust  that  they 
had  bodies  that  were  necessary  to  be  fed,  clothed, 
and  housed.  Christianity  appeared,  and  from  the 
mouths  of  unlettered  fishermen  doctrine  claimed  to 
be  infallible  came  forth — that  God  himself  had  be 
come  incarnate  in  the  womb  of  an  Immaculate 
Virgin,  and  had  made  himself  known,  and  had  been 
tempted  to  evil  even  as  mankind,  though  without 
yeilding;  that  he  had  suffered  like  mankind  in  the 
human  body  which  he  had  assumed,  and  groaned  in 
anguish  from  this  suffering;  that  he  had  wept  tears 
of  blood,  and  in  his  human  being  had  died,  but 
that  afterwards  he,  his  body  as  well  as  his  spirit, 
had  risen  from  the  tomb,  and  both  had  gone  to  his 
native  heaven.  Then  these  same  fishermen  an- 


PRK-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  155 

nounced  that  not  only  is  the  spirit  of  man  immortal, 
but  the  body  also;  that  the  latter  is  destined  to 
resurrection  similar  to  that  of  the  Incarnate  God, 
and  both,  under  conditions,  live  for  ever  with  him 
in  such  felicity  as  the  mind  of  man  has  never  con 
ceived. 

Behold  now  what  dignity  was  attached  to  the 
human  body,  which  so  many  of  the  philosophers 
had  despised.  It  was  even  styled  a  temple  wherein 
was  wont  to  dwell  the  Most  High.  Not  that  its  evil 
wants  were  less  to  be  condemned,  but  more;  yet 
that  they  must  be  restrained,  power  to  accomplish 
which  endeavor  could  be  obtained  by  fervent  re 
quests  to  the  risen  God  to  impart  it;  further,  that 
yielding  to  them  in  periods  of  incapacity  to  resist 
might  be  condoned  by  penance;  that  while  com 
punction  for  wrong-doing  was  ever  becoming  and 
salutary,  remorse  such  as  led  to  despair  was  regarded 
by  Heaven  as  one  of  the  greatest  injuries  that  man 
could  inflict  upon  himself.  Henceforth  the  body  was 
to  have  recognized  all  of  its  importance  in  the  being 
of  man — all;  no  more,  no  less.  We  were  not  taught 
that  pain  was  no  evil.  Pain  was  an  evil,  at  least  a 
misfortune,  inherited  by  man  from  ancestors  who 
had  violated  well  recognized  laws.  Yet  pain  could 
be  lessened  by  submitting  with  all  possible  endur 
ance  to  its  infliction,  in  the  confidence  that  deliver 
ance  was  to  come,  even  as  it  had  come  to  the  In- 


156  PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

carnate  when  he  had  risen  from  the  tomb ;  that  such 
endurance  would  cause  the  evil  to  be  remembered 
with  pleasure  in  good  time,  even  during  this  mortal 
existence. 

That  such'  doctrines  must  be  received  by  the  mul 
titudes  reasoning  minds,  even  unaided  by  religious 
faith,  must  perceive.  Philosophy,  in  its  department 
of  ethics,  must  go  down.  It  made  a  feeble  struggle. 
Its  last  great  one  was  when  Julian,  persecuted  by 
his  kinsmen  while  they  sat  upon  the  throne — Chris 
tians  in  name  but  heretical  in  opinions — was  driven 
to  seek  consolation  for  the  wrongs  he  had  suffered 
to  the  melancholy  Plato.  Among  the  careers  of 
princes  none  seems  more  to  be  compassionated  than 
that  of  this,  the  last  and  greatest  of  the  Flavian  line. 
What  he  might  have  done  and  what  he  might  have 
become  but  for  his  early  death  are  known  only  to 
God.  Other  things  besides  admission  of  defeat  may 
have  been  meant  in  those  last  mournful  words :  "O 
Galilean,  thou  hast  triumphed !" 

We  said  that  there  was  a  pathos  in  that  philoso 
phy  of  the  ancients — its  various  discoursings  after 
the  certitude  which  was  to  bring  tranquillity  to  the 
upright,  thoughtful  mind;  its  ever-repeating  disap 
pointments;  its  alternatings  between  the  pursuit  of 
pleasure  and  the  contempt  of  pain,  between  the 
dogmatic  assertions  of  the  existence  of  gods  and 
the  doubts  thereupon  which  overwhelmed  with  sad- 


PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  157 

ness  and  sometimes  drove  to  despair.  What  sad 
ness  in  the  words  of  Cicero  to  Brutus  in  explana 
tion  of  what  the  world  wondered  at — his  resort  to 
philosophy :  "Another  inducement  to  it  was  a  mel 
ancholy  disposition  of  mind,  and  the  great  and 
heavy  oppression  of  fortune  that  was  upon  me; 
from  which,  if  I  could  have  found  any  surer  remedy, 
I  would  not  have  sought  relief  in  this  pursuit." 
Scarcely  less  sad  the  concluding  words  of  that  treat 
ise  on  The  Nature  of  the  Gods,  when,  after  the  dis 
pute  between  Cotta,  a  disciple  of  the  Academy,  and 
Balbus,  of  the  Stoics,  Velleius,  whom  the  Epicur 
eans  loved  to  style  the  most  gifted  of  the  Romans, 
could  thus  decide :  "  Velleius  judged  that  the  argu 
ments  of  Cotta  were  truest,  but  those  of  Balbus 
seemed  to  have  the  greater  probability."  The  great 
orator,  like  the  last  of  the  Greeks,  tired  of  strife  and 
turmoil,  of  the  weight  of  years,  of  the  sight  of  the 
decay  of  liberty  and  patriotism,  turned  again  to  the 
scene  of  the  studies  of  his  youth, 

"  The  olive-grove  of  Academe — 
Plato's  retirement — where  the  Attic-bird 
Trills  her  thick-warbled  notes  the  summer  long-," 

and  dreamed,  but  only  dreamed,  of  things  than  the 
present 

"Far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns." 

The  thoughtful  Christian  mind  sees  in  all  these 


158  PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

struggles  what  both  to  compassionate  and  what  to 
admire — the  earnestness  of  purpose  searching  for 
the  truth  with  anguishing  anxiety,  believing  in  im 
mortality  although  dreading  annihilation,  yet,  during 
all  these  struggles,  loyal  to  friendship,  and  love,  and 
honor,  and  justice,  and  patriotism.  Ah!  how  good 
is  God  to  have  bestowed  upon  the  old  world  such 
exemplars  both  to  the  heathen  and  to  the  Christian 
who  was  to  come  after  with  the  Word  in  his  hands 
and  authorized  interpreters  of  all  its  intentions! 
No  wonder  that  even  Christians  styled  Plato  in  par 
ticular  The  Divine.  Says  the  Abbe'  Bougaud  in 
Histoire  de  Sainte  Monique:  "  II  a  laissee  les  Peres 
de  1'Eglise  incertains  du  nom  qu'il  fallal t  lui  dormer; 
ceux-ci  voyant  en  lui  le  ge'nie  hum  am  eleve  a  sa 
plus  haute  puissance;  ceux-la  1' appellant  un  Moise 
paien,  un  prophete  inspire  de  Dieu,  un  preparateur 
evangelique  envoye  aux  nations  assises  a  1'ombre 
de  la  mort;  tous  d'accord  a  saluer  ce  doux  et  mer- 
veilleux  etranger  du  nom  de  Divin."  These  words 
were  becoming  to  use  while  referring  to  the  mother 
of  Augustine,  whose  mind  lingered  so  fondly  with 
the  sage  of  the  Academy,  and  whose  teachings  re 
ceived  from  that  exalted  source  carried  him  at 
length  to  the  highest. 

What  if  such  a  man  had  lived  to  meet  the  Baptist 
clothed  in  camel's  hair  in  the  wilderness  of  Judea, 
proclaiming  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  was  at 


PRK-A.MERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  159 

hand?  Were  there  not  Philo  and  the  rabbis?  Were 
there  not  the  Neo-Platonists?  Alas!  the  former 
were  deaf  to  the  voice,  because  they  had  mistaken 
the  nature  of  the  royalty  in  which  their  King  was  to 
come  in  triumph,  while  the  latter  could  not  endure 
to  listen  to  the  "foolishness  of  preaching"  in  the 
unlettered  poor.  From  the  former,  because,  being 
his  own,  they  received  him  not,  he  turned  away  to 
the  Gentiles,  and  the  very  wisdom  of  the  latter,  now 
polluted  by  the  decays  of  many  kinds,  "  knew  not 
God." 

Such  is  a  brief,  partial  view  of  ancient  philosophy. 
Its  ethics  were  overthrown  by  those  of  Christianity. 
Its  last  teachers  went  out  of  Christendom  to  linger 
out  their  lives  in  the  kingdoms  of  the  East,  while 
Christians  like  Thomas  of  Aquin  engrafted  its 
methods  upon  the  new  faith,  reconciling,  never 
to  be  disunited,  the  subtlest  reason  with  the 
humblest  belief.  Truth,  called  at  one  time  a 
phantom,  at  another  a  phantasm,  was  found  to  ex 
ist  only  in  the  church  of  Christ.  Happiness,  for 
which  the  wise  of  all  ages  had  sought,  was  found 
in  the  grace  God  extended  in  equal  abundance 
to  the  innocent  and  the  penitent.  The  best 
lovers  and  the  best-loved  of  Christ  were  the  virgin, 
John  and  Magdalen,  the  repentant  sinner.  Since 
that  time  the  very  greatest  intellects,  the  higher 
have  they  been  exalted  in  genius,  culture,  and  earn- 


l6o  PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

estness,  have  been  let  down  into  the   lowest  depths 
of  humble  thankfulness. 

It  is  less  interesting  to  pursue  philosophy  in  its 
feeble  attempts  since  to  recover  what  Christianity 
wrested  from  its  hands.  Yet  there  is  interest  in 
contemplating  the  career  of  that  greatest  of  modern 
philosophers,  Bacon,  who  wisely  left  to  Christianity 
the  field  which  was  peculiarly  its  own,  and  enlarged 
that  wherein  philosophy  might  work  for  the  attainment 
ot  its  lawful  ends.  The  greatest  of  the  philosophers 
of  modern  times,  he  was  a  Christian.  As 
in  the  careers  of  the  men  of  Greece,  so  in  him, 
after  his  fall,  there  is  profound  pathos,  mingled  with 
gratification  that  he  turned  for  relief  to  the  only 
source  whence  it  could  come  to  the  guilty  and  the 
fallen.  We  can  never  read  without  emotion  the 
following  portions  of  one  of  his  prayers: 

"Most  gracious  Lord  God,  my  merciful  Father  from  my  youth  up! 
my  Creator,  my  Redeemer,  my  Comforter!  thou,  O  Lord,  soundest 
and  searchest  the  depths  and  secrets  of  all  hearts;  thou  acknowledg- 
est  the  upright  of  heart;  thou  judgest  the  hypocrite;  thou  ponderest 
men's  thoughts  and  doings  in  a  balance;  thou  measurest  their  inten 
tions  as  with  a  line;  vanity  and  crooked  ways  cannot  be  hid  from 
thee  .  .  .  O  Lord,  my  strength!  I  have  since  my  youth  met  with 
thee  in  all  my  ways,  by  thy  fatherly  compassions,  by  thy  comfortable 
chastisements,  and  by  thy  most  visible  providence.  As  thy  favors 
have  increased  upon  me,  so  have  thy  corrections;  so  as  thou  hast 
been  always  near  me,  O  Lord,  and  ever  as  my  worldly  blessings 
were  exalted,  so  secret  darts  from  thee  have  pierced  me;  and  when  I 
have  ascended  before  men  I  have  descended  in  humiliation  before 
thee.  And  now,  when  I  thought  most  of  peace  and  honor,  thy  hand 
is  heavy  upon  me,  and  hath  humbled  me  according  to  thy  former  lov 
ing  kindness,  keeping  me  still  in  thy  fatherly  school,  not  as  a  bastard, 


PRE-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  l6l 

but  as  a  child.  Just  are  thy  judgments  upon  me  for  my  sins,  which 
are  more  in  number  than  the  sands  of  the  sea,  but  have  no  proportion 
to  thy  mercies;  for  what  are  the  sands  of  the  sea?  Earth,  heavens, 
and  all  these  are  nothing  to  thy  mercies.  Besides  my  innumerable 
sins,  I  confess  before  thee  that  I  am  debtor  to  thee  for  the  greatest 
talent  of  thy  gifts  and  graces,  which  I  have  neither  put  into  a  napkin 
nor  put  it,  as  I  ought,  to  exchangers,  where  it  might  have  made  best 
profit,  but  misspent  it  in  things  for  which  I  was  least  fit;  so  I  may 
truly  say  my  soul  hath  been  a  stranger  in  the  course  of  my  pilgri 
mage.  Be  merciful  unto  me,  O  Lord,  for  my  Saviour's  sake,  and  re 
ceive  me  unto  thy  bosom,  or  guide  me  in  thy  ways/' 

When  philosophy  can  thus  humble  itself  before 
God,  confess  its  errors,  and  pray  for  pardon  and 
guidance  in  the  pursuit  of  things  beyond  its  ken, 
we  may  bid  it  God-speed  in  inquiries  within  the 
range  of  its  possibilities.  Philosophy  may  provide 
for  the  material  wants  of  mankind,  but  religion  alone 
can  be  counted  on  to  satisfy  the  spiritual.  Its  sim 
plicity  and  its  exactions  keep  away  many,  especially 
of  the  prosperous  and  the  proud;  but  what  healing 
have  not  the  stricken  and  the  humble  found  in  its 
sweet  influences!  Did  some  of  the  philosophers 
call  pain  an  evil,  and  others  not?  What  would  both 
sets  of  disputants  have  said  if  they  could  have  fore 
seen  Francis  Xavier  first  in  his  labors  and  then  in 
his  repose?  ltAmpliust  O  Domine!  ampliiis!"  he 
said  when  his  sufferings  in  the  East  were  foretold  to 
him.  Afterwards,  when  resting  in  the  gardens  of 
St.  Goa,  and  his  spirit  could  not  support  the  flood 
of  happiness  that  poured  within  it,  he  could  only 
cry  out  in  the  anguish  of  ecstasy,  "Satis,  O  Domi- 


1 62  PRK-AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

net  satis  est!"  The  men  whom  we  have  mentioned 
would  have  rejoiced  for  the  coming  of  such  a  day, 
although  knowing  that  they  must  die  without  the 
sight. 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 


A  MERICA  has  been  in  the  possession  of  civilized 
**•  man  for  three  hundred  years.  Among  its  num 
erous  varied  products  is  one  philosopher.  His  in 
fluence  upon  the  generation  that  was  contemporary 
with  him  and  with  some  that  succeeded  was  very 
great.  Of  his  life,  private  and  public,  the  world 
knows  more  than  of  those  of  any  of  his  predecessors. 
His  public  belongs  to  the  history  of  his  times;  his 
private  has  been  recorded  by  himself  with,  a  cir 
cumstantiality  that  shows  how  important  he  regarded 
it  that  the  world  should  see  to  what  vast  heights  a 
rnan  can  rise  from  lowest  beginning  with  no  other 
helps  than  his  own  energy,  thrift,  and  sagacity. 
One  who  has  read  his  Autobiography,  might  regard 
this  curious  work  as  a  record  of  confessions  but  for 
the  evidence  of  the  pride  that  he  took  in  indit 
ing  it. 

In  the  article  named  "Pre- American  Philosophy" 
we  noted  the  modesty,  the  earnestness,  and  the 
sometimes  sadness,  which  for  the  most  part  char 
acterized  the  wise  men  of  old.  We  saw  that,  how 
ever  various  were  their  speculations  upon  human 
163 


164  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

happiness,  they  believed  it  to  be  made  mainly  of 
intellectual  and  moral  elements  that  were  noble  and 
pure.  Some  of  them  went  to  the  length  of  despis 
ing  the  pleasures  that  result  from  the  possession  of 
material  benefits;  others,  not  despising,  disregarded 
them;  while  others  yet  pursued  them  with  moderate 
quest  and  indulged  only  in  their  temperate  use. 
Even  the  gay  Horace,  favorite  at  the  greatest  court 
of  the  world,  wrote  to  the  opulent  Pompeius 
Grosphus : 

"  He  who  enjoys  nor  covets  more 
Than  lands  his  father  held  before 

Is  of  true  bliss  possessed: 
Let  but  his  mind  unfettered  tread 
Far  as  the  paths  of  knowledge  lead, 

And  wise  as  well  as  blessed." 

The  acrimonies  among  the  various  sects  were 
often  pronounced.  By  the  Stoics  the  garden  of 
Epicurus  was  called  a  pig-sty,  while  by  many 
Diogenes  and  his  associates  were  saluted  Cynics. 
Nevertheless  all  of  them  had  aims  and  counsel  for 
the  noble  and  pure,  and  not  one  of  them  taught 
that  the  way  to  happiness  lay  through  prosperity 
that  comes  from  the  mere  possession  of  wealth. 
This  precept  had  been  reserved  for  the  philosopher 
of  the  New  World. 

It  was  said  of  Diogenes  that  while  but  a  youth, 
having  been  suspected  of  complicity  in  the  crime  of 
his  father,  a  banker  of  Sinope,  who  had  been  con- 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  165 

victed  of  debasing  the  coin,  he  fled  to  Athens,  where 
Antisthenes  was  teaching  the  virtue  of  poverty,  and 
thereupon  became  his  disciple.  Franklin  began  his 
philosophic  career  much  younger,  even  at  the  age  ot 
ten  years.  The  question  was  argued  between  him 
self  and  his  father  whether  the  utility  of  a  "wharff" 
which  had  been  constructed  by  himself,  at  the  head 
of  a  band  of  urchins,  on  the  edge  of  a  quagmire  at 
the  margin  of  a  mill-pond  in  which  they  were  wont 
to  angle  for  minnows,  was  greater  or  less  than  the 
crime  of  stealing  the  stones  for  its  construction. 
The  old  gentleman  got  the  best  of  the  argument 
with  the  help  of  a  rod  of  sufficient  firmness.  The 
concession  then  made,  that  "nothing  was  useful 
which  was  not  honest,"  had  to  be  deviated 
from  some  time  afterwards  in  the  case  of  what  he 
admitted  to  be  one  of  the  errata  of  his  life — his 
availing  himself  of  a  fraudulent  change  in  the  in 
dentures  by  which  he  had  been  bound  to  a  brutal 
elder  brother,  and  running  away  from  him. 

One  of  Franklin's  ancestors  had  been  a  poet,  a 
specimen  of  whose  verse  here  follows  (written  in 
behalf  of  liberty  of  conscience) : 

"  I  am  for  peace  and  not  for  war, 

And  that's  the  reason  why 
I  write  more  plain  than  some  men  do 

That  used  to  daub  and  lie. 
But  I  shall  cease,  and  set  my  name 

To  what  I  here  insert, 
Because  to  be  a  libeller 


1 66  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

I  hate  it  with  my  heart. 
From  Sherburne  town,  where  now  I  dwell, 

My  name  I  do  put  here; 
Without  offence  your  real  friend, 

It  is  Peter  Folgier." 

While  apprenticed  to  his  brother,  who  was  a 
printer,  he  bestowed  temporary  attention  to  the 
cultivation  of  the  hereditary  vein,  at  the  instance  of 
his  brother,  who  sent  him  around  hawking  (in  Bos 
ton,  their  native  place)  his  Lighthouse  Tragedy 
and  a  sailor's  song  on  the  capture  of  Teach,  the 
pirate.  But  his  father  again  diverted  him  by  telling 
him  that  "verse-makers  were  generally  beggars." 

It  is  curious  to  follow  the  youthful  philosopher 
along  his  career  of  endeavors  after  what  were  the 
best  things;  his  eagerness  for  the  knowledge  to  be 
gotten  from  books;  his  debating  with  himself  about 
whether  or  not  he  ought  to  spare  the  time  he  had 
for  reading  on  Sundays  by  going  to  church,  and  de 
ciding  for  the  negative ;  his  adopting  a  vegetable 
diet  in  order  to  save  both  time  and  money,  and 
other  employments  judged  likely  to  be  useful  after 
a  while.  Let  us  hear  some  of  his  comments  on 
disputation : 

"There  was  another  bookish  lad  in  the  town,  John  Collins  byname, 
with  whom  I  was  intimately  acquainted.  We  sometimes  disputed, 
and  very  fond  we  were  of  argument,  and  very  desirous  of  confuting 
one  another,  which  disputatious  turn,  by  the  way,  is  apt  to  become  a 
very  bad  habit,  making  people  often  extreamly  disagreeable  in  com 
pany  by  the  contradiction  that  is  necessary  to  bring  it  into  practice; 
and  thence,  besides  souring  and  spoiling  the  conversation,  is  produc 
tive  of  disgusts,  and  perhaps  enmities  where  you  may  have  occasion 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  167 

for  friendship.  I  had  caught  it  by  reading  my  father's  books  of  dis 
pute  about  religion.  Persons  of  good  sense,  I  have  since  observed, 
seldom  fall  into  it,  except  lawyers,  university  men,  and  men  of  all 
sorts  that  have  been  bred  at  Edinborough." 

The  harm  of  disputatious  reasoning  appeared  to 
him  quite  early,  as  we  notice  in  the  following: 

uAnd  being  then1'  (after  studying  Greenwood's  English  Grammar 
and  Xenophon's  "Memorable  Things  of  Socrates,")  ufrom  reading 
Shaftesbury  and  Collins,  become  a  real  doubter  in  many  points  of 
our  religious  doctrine,  I  found  this  method  safest  for  myself  and  very 
embarrassing  to  those  against  whom  I  used  it;  therefore  I  took  a  de 
light  in  it,  practised  it  continually,  and  grew  very  artful  and  expert 
in  drawing  people,  even  of  superior  knowledge,  into  concessions  the 
consequences  of  which  they  did  not  foresee,  entangling  them  in 
difficulties  out  of  which  they  could  not  extricate  themselves,  and  so 
obtaining  victories  that  neither  myself  nor  my  cause  always  deserved. 
I  continued  this  method  some  few  years,  but  gradually  left  it,  retain 
ing  only  the  habit  of  expressing  myself  in  terms  of  modest  diffidence, 
never  using,  when  I  advanced  anything  that  may  be  possibly  dis 
puted,  the  words  "certainly, ""undoubtedly,1"  or  any  others  that  give 
the  air  of  positiveness  to  an  opinion;  but  rather  say,  I  conceive  or  ap 
prehend  a  thing  to  be  so  and  so;  It  appears  to  me,  or  I  imagine  it  to  be 
so,  if  I  am  not  mistaken.  This  habit,  I  believe,  has  been  of  great  ad 
vantage  to  me  when  I  have  had  occasion  to  inculcate  my  opinions 
and  persuade  men  into  measures  that  I  have  been,  from  time  to  time, 
engaged  in  promoting,"  etc. 

The  escape  from  his  brother  by  means  of  the  false 
indentures  troubled  him  little  to  remember,  especi 
ally  since  that  brother  by  his  representations  con 
cerning  the  fraud,  hindered  him  from  getting  other 
business  in  that  community: 

"It  was  not  fair  for  me  to  take  this  advantage,  and  this  I  therefore 
reckon  one  of  the  first  errata  of  my  life;  but  the  unfairness  of  it 
weighed  little  with  me,  when  under  impressions  of  resentment  for  the 
blows  his  passion  too  often  urged  him  to  bestow  upon  me,  though  he 
was  otherwise  not  an  ill-natured  man;  perhaps  I  was  too  saucy  and 
provoking." 


1 68  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

The  fugitive,  now  a  boy  of  seventeen,  was  landed 
in  Philadelphia  with  a  cash  capital  of  a  Dutch  dol 
lar  and  about  a  shilling  in  copper.  The  philoso 
pher  develops.  "The  shilling,"  he  says,  "I  gave 
the  people  of  the  boat  for  my  passage,  who  at  first 
refused  it  on  account  of  my  rowing;  but  I  insisted 
on  their  taking  it.  A  man  being  sometimes  more 
generous  when  he  has  but  a  little  money  than  when 
he  has  plenty,  perhaps  thro'  fear  of  being  thought  to 
have  but  little." 

We  cannot  but  feel  much  ot  some  sort  of  respect 
for  a  philosopher  of  seventeen  years  who,  with  his 
Dutch  dollar — less  three  pennyworth  spent  for 
bread — confident  and  cool,  strolled  along  Market 
Street,  gnawing  away  at  one  of  the  huge  loaves, 
while  the  other  two  were  tucked  beneath  his  arms, 
looking  about  him  leisurely  for  the  living  that  he 
was  sure  would  come,  not  minding  the  while  the 
smiles  of  Miss  Read  at  his  awkward  and  ridiculous 
appearance,  who  was  to  think  so  much  better  of 
him  ere  long.  Employment  with  one  Keimer, 
one  of  the  pretended  prophets  from  the  Cevennes 
who  "could  act  their  enthusiastic  agitations,"  but 
was  very  ignorant  of  the  world,  gave  opportunities 
to  the  thrift  and  cunning  he  possessed.  That  was 
an  eventful  day  when  Governor  Keith  called  at  the 
printing-office,  and,  instead  of  stopping  with  the 
French  prophet,  who  ran  down  to  meet  the  distin- 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  169 

guished  visitor,  asked  for  the  workman,  whose  mas 
ter  "started  like  a  pig  poisoned;"  and  it  was  a  day 
of  triumph  of  its  kind  when,  six  months  afterwards, 
full  of  promises  from  the  governor,  whose  letter  he 
bore  to  his  father  bespeaking  the  latter's  help  to  set 
up  his  son  in  business  so  that  he  could  realize  these 
promises,  "having  a  genteel  new  suit  from  head  to 
foot,  a  watch,  and  my  pockets  lined  with  near  five 
pounds  in  silver,"  the  brother  from  whom  he  had 
run  away  "received  me  not  very  frankly,  looked  me 
all  over,  and  turned  to  his  work  again."  It  did 
seem  hard,  however,  when,  the  brother  "still  grum 
and  sullen, "  he  spread  a  handful  of  silver  before  the 
wondering  eyes  of  the  printing  boys,  and,  going  to 
the  length  of  giving  them  "a  piece  of  eight  to  drink, " 
thereby  "insulted  him  in  such  a  manner  before  his 
people  that  he  could  never  forget  or  forgive  it." 
Yet  from  the  fond  parent  he  could  get  nothing  but  a 
promise  to  help  him  when  he  should  reach  the  age 
of  twenty-one  years,  and  advice  to  "endeavor  to 
obtain  the  general  esteem,  and  avoid  lampooning 
and  libelling,  to  which  he  thought  I  had  too  much 
inclination." 

It  reads  like  a  moderately  good  novel  when  the 
philosopher  tells  of  how,  on  the  voyage  back  to 
Philadelphia,  he  soothed  the  qualms  of  conscience 
for  the  "unprovoked  murder  of  taking  fish,"  when  a 
cod  came  "hot  out  of  the  frying-pan,  smelling 


I  70  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

admirably  well;"  of  how  he  rose  in  Keimer's  es 
timation  by  his  adroit  use  of  the  Socratic  method, 
and 

"Trepanned  him  so  often  by  questions  apparently  so  distant  from 
any  point  we  had  in  hand,  and  yet  by  degrees  lead  to  the  point  and 
brought  him  into  difficulties  and  contradictions,  that  at  last  he  grew 
ridiculously  cautious,  and  would  hardly  answer  me  the  most  common 
question  without  asking  first, 'What  do  you  intend  to  infer  from  that?1 
However,  it  gave  him  so  high  an  opinion  of  my  abilities  in  the  con 
futing  way  that  he  seriously  proposed  my  being  his  colleague  in  a 
project  he  had  of  setting  up  a  new  sect.  He  was  to  preach  the  doct 
rines,  and  I  was  to  confound  all  opponents.  \Vhen  he  came  to  explain 
with  me  upon  the  doctrines  I  found  several  conundrums  which  I  ob 
jected  to,  unless  I  might  have  my  way  a  little  too,  and  introduce  some 
of  mine." 

It  is  proper  to  note  here  that  the  philosopher  was 
not  yet  fully  prepared  to  originate  and  propound 
theological  doctrines.  They  must  remain  in  abey 
ance  until  those  more  important  for  the  government 
of  this  mere  mortal  existence  were  sufficiently  ascer 
tained  and  settled.  For  the  present  he  would  con 
tent  himself  with  a  temporary  quasi-coalescence 
with  the  prophet  from  the  Cevennes,  destined  to  be 
snapped  suddenly  by  the  latter's  violation  of  one 
article  of  their  creed  (the  abstaining  from  animal 
food)  by  eating  the  whole  of  a  roast  pig  at  his  own 
table  before  the  time  of  dinner,  to  which  his  coll 
eague  and  "two  women-friends"  had  been  invited. 
Yet  he  admits  to  have  unsettled  the  faith  of  Charles 
Osborne  and  James  Ralph,*  two  young  men  of  his 

*Ralph  went  back  to  England  and  became  somewhat  noted  as  a 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  Ijl 

acquaintance,  "for  which  they  both  made  me  suffer" 
— in  his  pocket.  As  for  Ralph,  who  was  destined 
to  be  kept  from  oblivion  by  the  Dimciad  of  Pope, 
the  philosopher's  advice  to  him  reminds  one  of  the 
chiding  of  Xenophanes  upon  Homer,  and  Plato's 
exclusion  of  poets  from  his  Republic  r  "I  approved 
the  amusing  one's  self  with  poetry  now  and  then,  so 
far  as  to  improve  one's  language,  but  no  farther." 
The  recollection  of  his  father's  criticism  upon  the 
Lighthouse  Tragedy,  and  his  name  for  the  followers 
of  the  gai  science,  doubtless  assured  him  of  the 
wholesomeness  of  this  counsel. 

All  varieties  of  philosophers,  excepting  probably 
the  Cynics,  and  certainly  those  bound  by  celibate 
obligations,  have  not  been  insensible  to  the  goods, 
real  and  imaginary,  of  married  life.  Even  Socrates 
must  have  a  wife,  selecting,  as  some  said,  the  most 
shrewish  he  could  find,  not  with  the  hope  of  taming 
her,  like  Petrucchio,  but  of  subjecting  his  patience 
and  endurance  to  perennial  tests.  But  for  the 
printed  words  from  his  own  manuscript  it  would  be 
incredible  that  Franklin,  then  old,  rich,  and  re 
nowned,  should  have  written  with  such  shocking  in 
delicacy  regarding  the  woman  whom  he  was  to 
marry,  and  some  of  the  incentives  that  drove  him 

political  pamphleteer.  Pope  silenced  him  as  a  poet  with  the  follow 
ing  in  the  "Dunciad:" 

"And  see!  the  very  Gazetteers  give  o'er, 

Ev'n  Ralph  repents,  and  Henley  writes  no  more." 


172  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

thereto.  Some  love-passages  had  been  between 
him  and  the  Miss  Read  before  mentioned,  with 
whose  parents  he  took  his  first  board,  but  on  his  sail 
ing  for  England  these  (though  he  was  confident  of  her 
reciprocation  of  his  feeling)  were  suspended.  Stung 
by  her  lover's  long  neglect,  she  had  married  a  potter, 
whom,  having  found  him  to  be  a  worthless  fellow 
and  reputed  to  have  another  wife,  she  had  forsaken. 
He  confesses  to  the  shame  he  felt,  upon  his  return 
from  England,  on  meeting  the  forlorn  woman,  his 
treatment  of  whom  he  names  another  of  his  errata 
— one,  however,  which  several  conditions  (some 
not  to  be  repeated  by  us)  rendered  capable  of 
correction.  We  can  afford  to  give  the  following 
specimen: 

UI  pitied  poor  Miss  Read's  unfortunate  situation,  who  was  gener 
ally  dejected,  seldom  cheerful,  and  avoided  company.  I  considered 
my  giddiness  and  inconstancy  when  in  London  as  in  a  great  degree 
the  cause  of  her  unhappiness,  tho1  the  mother  was  good  enough  to 
think  the  fault  more  her  own  than  mine,  as  she  had  prevented  our 
marrying  before  I  went  thither,  and  persuaded  the  other  match  in 
my  absence.  Our  mutual  affection  was  revived,  but  there  were  now 
great  objections  to  our  union.  The  match  was  indeed  looked  upon 
as  invalid,  a  preceding  wife  being  said  to  be  still  living  in  England; 
but  this  could  not  easily  be  proved  because  of  the  distance;  and  tho' 
there  was  a  report  of  his  death,  it  was  not  certain.  Then,  tho1  it 
should  be  true,  he  had  left  many  debts,  which  his  successor  might  be 
called  upon  to  pay.  We  ventured,  however,  over  all  these  difficulties, 
and  I  took  her  to  wife  September  ist,  1730.  None  of  the  inconven 
iences  happened  that  we  had  apprehended;  she  proved  a  good  and 
faithful  helpmate,  assisted  me  much  by  attending  the  shop;  we 
throve  together,  and  have. ever  mutually  endeavored  to  make  each 
other  happy.  Thus  I  corrected  that  great  erratum  as  well  as  I 
could." 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  I  73 

The  principal  element  in  the  being  of  Franklin 
as  a  man  and  as  a  philosopher  was  selfishness.  It 
was  his  cool  imperturbabrlity,  it  was  his  never- 
sleeping  watchfulness  towards  what  would  gratify 
this  selfishness  that  carried  him  to  such  a  height. 
His  great  doctrine  was  that  the  road  to  human  vir 
tue  and  happiness  was  wealth.  This  doctrine  was 
already  in  his  mind  when  he  was  a  child  in  his 
father's  house,  grown  stronger  when  he  went  about 
the  streets  of  Boston  hawking  his  own  ballads,  and 
living  upon  vegetables  in  order  to  have  money  with 
which  to  purchase  books.  Whatever  came  within 
view  of  that  spirit,  the  most  watchful  and  persistent 
of  mankind,  was  appropriated  or /ejected  according 
as  it  was  found  or  believed  to  be  a  help  or  a  hin 
drance  in  the  way  of  the  kind  of  happiness  that  he 
sought.  The  disputes  which  he  had  had  with  his 
father  about  the  need  of  the  wharf,  which  he  held 
with  himself  a  little  later  upon  the  question  of  at 
tending  religious  services  or  staying  home  with  his 
books  on  Sundays,  were  prophetic.  It  was  utility, 
personal  utility,  that  he  was  to  study  and  to  take 
wherever  he  could.  The  consequences  of  the  wharf 
business  convinced  him  that  dishonesty  was  not 
useful.  Therefore  he  will  practise  it  no  more,  at 
least  after  just  such  a  style  as  pilfering  another's 
goods.  But  the  world  must  not  expect  from  him 
delicate  balancings  along  the  border-line  between 


174  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

the  questionable  and  the  unquestionable  thing? 
in  human  conduct.  Some  of  the  things  that 
he  tells  us  exhibit  an  audacity  of  vanity  that 
none  except  a  very  great  man  could  feel  or  dare 
to  avow.  One  had  learned  to  rather  pity  the 
poor  crazy  prophet,  so  unthrifty,  so  friendless,  so 
unapt  in  hiding  his  poverty  and  his  numerous  in 
firmities — in  fine,  so  much  of  a  child,  an  orphan- 
child  at  that.  Yet  for  years  the  employee  had  been 
foreseeing  the  end  of  a  sure  decline  and  silently 
counting  upon  rising  upon  his  fall.  It  was  at  the 
time  of  beginning  the  famous  The  Universal  In 
structor  in  all  Arts  and  Sciences,  and  Pennsylvania 
Gazette,  the  intention  of  whose  establishment,  long 
concealed,  was  made  known  to  Keimer  by  another 
workman,  one  Webb,  that  the  failing  printer  tried 
to  improve  his  own  sheet  so  that  it  might  compete 
with  the  one  now  projected.  The  friends  whom 
Franklin  had  made  had  assured  him  often  that  it 
was  only  a  question  of  time,  ever  rapidly  diminish 
ing,  when  the  thriftless  creature  must  get  out  of 
his  way.  Now,  this  last  spasmodic  effort  was  too 
much  for  the  man  who  had  been  waiting  "long, 
too  long  already."  Let  us  listen  to  what  he 
says: 

"I  resented  this,  and  to  counteract  them,  as  I  could  not  yet  begin 
our  paper,  I  wrote  several  pieces  of  entertainment  for  Bradford's 
paper,  under  the  title  of  Busy  Body,  which  Breintnal  continued  some 
months.  By  this  means  the  attention  of  the  puhlick  was  fixed  on 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  I  75 

that  paper,  and  Keimer's  proposals,  which  were  burlesqued  and  rid 
iculed,  were  disregarded.  He  began  his  paper,  however,  and,  after 
carrying  it  on  three-quarters  of  a  year,  he  offered  it  to  me  for  a 
trifle;  and  I,  having  been  ready  some  time  to  go  on  with  it,  took  it  in 
hand  directly,  and  it  proved  in  a  few  years  'extreamly'  profitable  to 
me." 

The  poor  insolvent  got  away  somehow  and  emi 
grated  to  the  Barbadoes.  Now  Franklin,  taught  by 
the  results  of  the  quagmire  "wharff "  and  other  ex 
periences,  doubtless  would  have  regarded  it  very  un 
wise  to  have  practised  on  the  "novice,"  as  he  some 
times  named  him,  actions  bold  as  the  stealing  of  a 
builder's  stones;  for  such  conduct  had  been  proven 
at  least  not  useful.  We  may  not  reach  forth  and 
pluck  with  our  hands  the  fruit,  though  overripe,  that 
hang  upon  another's  tree;  but  we  may  eagerly 
watch  the  bough  upon  which  it  hangs  leaning  over 
our  side  of  the  wall,  and  receive  it  when  fallen  into 
thankful  laps.  The  useful,  is  that  for  which  we 
must  seek  in  order  for  the  obtainment  of  the  hap 
piness  we  desire.  Dishonesty  is  bad  policy,  hon 
esty  is  good.  Let  us  consider  how  the  argument 
was  carried  into  religion.  After  telling  of  how  he 
once  became  a  deist  he  thus  proceeds: 

"My  arguments  perverted  some  others,  particularly  Collins  and 
Ralph;  but  each  of  them  having  afterwards  wronged  me  greatly 
without  the  least  compunction,  and  recollecting  Keith's  conduct 
towards  me*  (who  was  another  free-thinker)  and  my  own  towards 
Vernonf  and  Miss  Read,  which  at  times  gave  me  great  trouble,  I 

*Keith  had  broken  his  promise  of  letters  of  introduction  to  persons 
in  London. 
•j-He  had  collected  some  money  for  Vernon,  used  it,  and  been  tardy 


176  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

began  to  suspect  that  this  doctrine,  tho1  it  might  be  true,  was  not 
very  useful." 

That  conclusion  must  settle  the  business  with 
deism.  Deism  had  to  go  out  of  his  creed,  and  it 
went. 

But  a  religion  of  some  sort  was  necessary  to  man 
in  the  long  run,  and  in  emergencies  it  must  even  be 
pronounced  and  clamorous,  and  sometimes,  for  a  de 
sired  purpose  of  utility,  put  on  sack-cloth  and  sit 
amid  ashes!  There  is  an  undertone  of  humor  in  his 
account  of  the  fast — "the  first  ever  thought  of  in  the 
province" — whose  proclamation  he  had  advised.  As 
no  precedent  coiild  be  found,  the  mover  had  to  draw 
up  the  document. 

"  My  education  in  New  England,  where  a  fast  is  proclaimed  every 
year,  was  here  of  some  advantage.  I  drew  it  in  the  accustomed  stile; 
it  was  translated  into  German,  printed  in  both  languages,  and  di 
vulged  through  the  province.  This  gave  the  clergy  of  the  different 
sects  an  opportunity  of  influencing  their  congregations  to  join  in  the 
association,  and  it  would  probably  have  been  gener?!  among  all  but 
Quakers  if  the  peace  had  not  soon  intervened." 

But  the  vanity  of  Franklin  becomes  gigantic  when 
we  see  him,  after  becoming  illustrious  throughout 
the  world,  meditating  the  foundation  of  a  new  sect. 
In  his  old  age  he  indulged  in  charitable  regret  that 
his  other  engagements  kept  putting  off  and  finally 

in  its  payment.  "Mr.  Vernon  about  this  time  put  me  in  mind  of  the 
debt  I  owed  him,  but  did  not  press  me.  I  wrote  him  an  ingenuous 
letter  of  acknowledgment,  craved  his  forbearance  a  little  longer, 
which  he  allowed  me,  and  as  soon  as  I  was  able  I  paid  the  principal 
with  interest  and  many  thanks;  so  that  erratum  was  in  some  degree 
corrected." 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  177 

hindered  so  benign  an  intention.  In  the  history  of 
mankind  we  believe  that  there  is  nothing  to  be  found 
in  its  kind  equal  to  the  following: 

"  My  ideas  at  that  time  were  that  the  sect  should  he  begun  and 
spread  at  first  among  young  and  single  men  only;  that  each  person 
to  be  initiated  should  not  only  declare  his  assent  to  such  a  creed,  but 
should  have  exercised  himself  with  the  thirteen  weeks'  examination 
and  practice  of  the  virtues,  as  in  the  forementioned  model;  that  the 
existence  of  such  a  society  should  be  kept  secret  till  it  was  become 
considerable,  to  prevent  solicitations  for  the  admission  of  improper 
persons,  but  that  the  members  should  each  of  them  search  among 
his  acquaintance  for  ingenuous,  well-disposed  youths,  to  whom,  with 
prudent  caution,  the  scheme  should  be  gradually  communicated;  that 
the  members  should  engage  to  afford  their  advice,  assistance,  and 
support  to  each  other  in  promoting  one  another's  interests,  business, 
and  advancement  in  life;  that  for  distinction  we  should  be  called 
'  The  Society  of  the  Free  and  Easy,'  "  etc.,  etc. 

Herein  have  we  put  down  a  few  things  in  the 
career  of  the  one  philosopher  whom  the  New  World 
has  produced  thus  far.  They  are  taken  from  his 
own  writing,  recorded  when  he  had  become  old  and 
the  world  was  filled  with  his  fame.  Other  things 
are  in  this  curious  book  which  could  not  be  repro 
duced  without  offending  others  as  well  as  ourselves, 
and  others  yet  were  decently  suppressed  by  the  editor 
from  the  author's  manuscript. 

That  Franklin  was,  in  some  respects,  what  is  usu 
ally  known  in  the  name  of  a  great  man  is  undeni 
able.  His  confidence  in  his  own  powers,  his  patient 
biding  of  his  times,  his  sagacity  in  the  pursuit  and 
compassing  of  the  ends  which  he  proposed,  his 
ready  perception  and  self-satisfactory  corrections  of 


I  78  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

the  mistakes  he  had  made  from  time  to  time,  his 
steady  endeavors  for  the  possible,  his  keeping  his 
eyes  away  from  the  visionary,  his  calm  lead  of  man 
kind,  his  freedom  from  temptation  for  the  quest  or 
indulgence  of  whatever  would  injure  his  health  or 
his  name,  or  would  retard  the  projects  he  had  ex 
tended — all  these  show  him  to  have  been  what  is 
generally  understood  in  the  name  of  a  great  man. 
But  remembering  of  what  sort  of  men  were  the  wise 
of  ancient  Greece,  can  we  justly  style  a  philosopher 
such  a  man  as  Franklin?  The  wise  men  of  ancient 
Greece,  heathen  though  they  were,  made  their  aim 
for  the  highest  good  that  was  possible  to  human 
nature.  That  highest  good  was  virtue.  Whatever 
else  that  word  might  include  within  its  meaning, 
neither  wealth  nor  mere  utility  was  among  them, 
bait  the  fear  of  God  and  kindness  to  mankind  were, 
chiefest  constitutents.  Some  despised,  many  dis 
regarded,  but  none  ever  sought  riches  as  the  chiefest 
means  of  leading  to  happiness,  and  especially  to 
virtue.  The  wisest  among  them  did  not  withhold 
becoming  respect  for  those  who  had  become  rich  by 
industry  or  inheritance,  whenever  these  did  not 
magnify  the  importance  of  their  possessions  in  the 
sum  of  human  existence.  Industry,  frugality,  tem 
perance  they  counselled,  because  they  were  promo 
ters,  to  the  extent  of  their  importance,  of  virtue  by 
the  health  of  body  and  the  peace  of  mind  which 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  I  79 

they  induced,  not  by  the  mere  accumulation  of  lands 
and  goods.  Franklin  was  the  first  to  exalt  Plutus 
among  the  superior  gods — -indeed,  to  put  his  throne 
at  the  summit.  With  him  wealth  was  both  virtue 
and  happiness.  In  the  pursuit  of  wealth  a  man's 
constant  aim  must  be  to  search  for  the  things  that 
will  be  useful  for  his  purpose,  and  evade  everything 
that  will  not.  He  must  not  steal,  nor  lie  (that  is, 
on  a  very  great  scale),  nor  be  debauched,  nor  glut 
tonous,  nor  intemperate,  nor  be  a  deist.  Why? 
Because  these  and  their  likes  will  be  found  useless 
in  the  matter  he  has  in  hand.  For  the  first  time  in 
lexicography  honesty  is  defined  or  made  synonymous 
with  policy;  rather,  good  policy.  As  for  religion, 
that  is  a  harmless  thing  in  general,  of  which  a  leader 
of  men,  on  occasions  of  great  perturbation  of  the 
public  mind,  may  avail  for  the  end  of  inducing  the 
clergy  of  all  sects  (except  Quakers,  who  are  com 
paratively  weak)  to  incite  their  congregations  to  co 
operation  in  action  necessary  to  the  common  weal. 
But  a  distinct,  definite,  reasonable,  true,  unerring 
creed  the  philosopher,  in  the  multifold  engrossments 
with  public  and  private  business,  could  never  obtain 
leisure  to  propound.  In  the  retirement  of  age  he 
kindly,  yet  without  pain,  regrets  that  a  scheme  so 
generously  conceived  was  hindered  in  its  execution 
because  of  so  many  matters  of  more  importance 
having  devolved  upon  him.  It  would  have  been 


l8o  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

curious  to  see  the  poor,  the  weary,  and  the  heavy- 
laden  knocking  at  the  door  of  that  church  to  which 
were  specially  to  be  denied  admittance  all  who  owed 
money.  Such  as  these  could  not  be  expected  to 
keep  themselves  in  view  of  that  standard  of  virtue 
which  in  the  "Almanac  by  Richard  Saunders, 
Philomat,  printed  and  sold  by  B.  Franklin,"  was 
exalted  even  above  the  Labarum  of  Constantine. 

"I  therefore  filled,"  he  says  in  the  fulness  of  the  sweetness  of  re 
membering-  Richard's  prodigious  success  in  his  venture — "I  therefore 
filled  all  the  little  spaces  that  occurred  between  the  remarkable  days 
in  the  calendar  with  proverbial  sentences,  chiefly  such  as  inculcated 
industry  and  frugality  as  the  means  of  procuring'  wealth,  and  there 
by  securing  virtue;  it  being  more  difficult  for  a  man  in  want  to  act 
always  honestly,  as,  to  use  here  one  of  those  proverbs,  'it  is  hard  for 
an  empty  sack  to  stand  upright.'  " 

It  would  have  been  curious,  we  repeat,  to  see  the 
result  of  a  poor  man's  application  for  membership 
in  a  church  whose  founder's  preaching  was  such  "  as 
the  harangue  of  a  wise  old  man  to  the  people  at 
tending  an  auction."  We  imagine  the  applicant  to 
be  dismissed  with  some  such  words  as  lago  employ 
ed  with  the  rejected  Roderigo : 

"Put  money  in  thy  purse:  ...  I  say,  put  money  in  thy  purse.  De 
feat  thy  favor  with  a  usurped  beard.  Put  but  money  in  thy  purse. 
.  .  .  Fill  thy  purse  with  money.  .  .  .  Traverse!  go;  provide  thy 
money." 

How  fallen  such  a  creed  below  not  only  the  be 
hests  of  Christianity,  but  of  the  very  ancientest  and 
crudest  philosophies!  To  say  nothing  of  what 
Franklin  thought  of  Christ,  how  he  must  have  imag- 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  l8l 

ined  himself  to  compassionate  all  others  who  had  pre 
ceded  him  in  quest  of  the  true  paths  of  wisdom !  How 
useless  to  him  must  have  seemed  their  solemn  medita 
tions  on  God  and  the  best  good  of  mankind,  their 
yearnings  for  immortality,  their  despondent  search- 
ings  for  truth,  destined  never  certainly  to  be  known 
not  to  be  a  phantom  until  her  hiding-place  should  be 
discovered  by  the  great  philosopher  of  the  West ! 
That  a  man  with  such  views  and  maxims,  with  ex 
traordinary  powers  for  their  enforcement,  should 
have  exerted  an  immense  influence  upon  a  hetero 
geneous  people  in  their  formation  of  society  in  a 
country  so  new  and  so  vast,  may  not  be  wondered  at, 
but  only  deplored.  No  other  philosopher  ever  had  so 
numerous  a  following.  With  .Aw  Richard's  Alma 
nac  in  his  hand,  and  with  his  own  persistent,  tireless, 
endless  commentings,  he  made  himself  an  apostle 
to  the  multitudes  whose  minds  he  led  away  from 
concern  for  spiritual  things  and  directed  to  the  pur 
suit  of  the  one  important  material.  The  dullest 
understanding  comprehended  his  doctrine  as  well 
as  the  brightest.  Reduced  to  logical  form  it  would 
read  thus: 

All  virtuous  men  are  happy; 

But,  none  but  the  rich  are  virtuous: 

Therefore,  none  but  the  rich  are  happy. 

In  such  a  discipline  how  many  thousands  upon 
thousands  in  our  country  have  spent  lives  of  varying 


1 82  AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY. 

lengths  in  that  search  for  happiness !  What  contriv 
ances  have  been  invented  for  that  end !  What  simula 
tions  of  justifiable  means  that  were  often  but  the  "Index 
and  obscure  prologue  to  the  history  of  foul  thoughts !" 
Alas!  how  many  have  been  led  away  from  Chris 
tianity,  and  even  from  the  development  of  manhood ! 
How  many  have  been  destroyed  whilst  endeavoring 
to  reconcile  those  two  proverbs  so  vastly  apart, 
Honesty  is  the  best  policy  and  It  is  hard  for  an 
empty  sack  to  stand  upright. 

Of  all  the  great  teachers  whom  the  world  has 
produced,  Franklin,  seems  least  like  Christ.  Christ 
ennobled  poverty  by  being  born  into  its  estate.  In 
it  he  chose  his  mother,  his  brethren,  his  friends. 
In  it  he  lived  and  died.  He  had  said,  "Blessed  are 
the  poor."  Franklin  rejecting  this,  elected  some 
others  of  his  precepts,  and  cunningly  diverted  them 
from  the  chiefest  purposes  for  which  they  had  been 
propounded.  Yet  he  hesitated  not  to  advise  the 
weaker  in  his  school  and  those  outside  to  call  upon 
Christ  on  occasions  of  public  emergency,  in  order 
to  obtain  universal  co-operation  in  endeavors  of 
pressing  public  importance.  In  his  old  age,  while 
retrospecting  his  long  career,  the  full  gratification  of 
his  mind  must  express  itself  in  the  words  of  that 
Autobiography,  a  thing  unique  in  its  kind.  Too 
wise  to  lament  in  vain  the  dwindling  of  strength  and 
desires,  he  yet  professed  his  willingness,  if  such 


AMERICAN    PHILOSOPHY.  183 

could  be,  to  live  over  his  life,  even  including  the 
errata,  all  of  which  he  had  moderately  regretted, 
and  of  some  of  which  he  had  been  rather  ashamed. 
Had  Franklin  been  a  Christian,  or  had  he  not 
sought  to  meddle  with  and  pervert  Christian  ethics, 
but  kept  his  speculations  within  the  fields  of  legiti 
mate  philosophical  inquiry,  the  greatness  of  his 
career  would  have  been  far  more  excellent,  and  all 
might  endorse  the  praise  of  Jeffrey:  "He  was  the 
most  rational,  perhaps,  of  all  philosophers.  No  in 
dividual  perhaps  ever  possessed  a  juster  understand 
ing,  or  was  so  seldom  obstructed  in  the  use  of  it  by 
indolence,  enthusiasm,  and  authority.' 


DELICACY  OF  SHAKESPEARE. 


UOORROW  is  better  than  laughter,"  said  the 
^  Preacher.  Yet  he  said  again,  "There  is  a 
time  to  laugh."  What  a  support  to  the  heart  of  man 
is  in  the  tears  which  come  to  his  eyes,  both  when 
they  come  from  grief  and  when  they  come  from  joy! 
The  subtile  influences  which  console  for  one  and 
subdue  the  exuberance  of  the  other  are  closely 
blended  in  the  depths  of  our  being.  So  it  is  that 
sorrow  is  often  followed  by  smiles,  and  laughter 
ends  with  sighing.  The  writer,  therefore,  who  un 
dertakes  to  represent  the  life  of  man  must  study 
these  elements  with  equal  care.  Plato  tells  us  of  a 
discussion  that  took  place  in  Athens  between  So 
crates  and  Aristophanes,  in  which  the  former  main 
tained  that  a  good  writer  of  tragedies  ought  to  be 
able  to  write  comedies  also.  Yet  it  was  two  thous 
and  years  before  the  full  force  of  the  argument  was 
illustrated. 

Greek  tragedy,  originating  in  religion,  designed 

to  inculcate  fear  of  the  gods,  especially  of  fate,  had 

no  place  for  scenes  except  of  the  solemn,  the  awful, 

and  the  terrific.     A  brave  man  struggles  with  Fate, 

184 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  185 

bravest  of  all  because  he  knows  that  he  must  strug 
gle  in  vain,  but  struggling  on  in  obedience  to  his 
native  impulsions  of  courage,  honor  and  sense  of 
justice,  and,  when  vanquished,  leaving  behind  the 
name  of  one  whom  nothing  except  Fate  could  have 
overthrown.  Such  was  the  burden  of  Greek  tragedy. 
Its  achievements  were  indescribably  great,  and  they 
stimulated  the  very  highest  endeavor.  Greek  comedy 
also,  in  its  very  first  intentions,  had  elements  of  the 
religious.  Curious  as  it  may  be,  yet  such  were 
many  of  the  scenes  in  honor  of  Bacchus.  But 
among  the  refined  Greeks  comedy  seemed  to  have 
had  for  its  object  to  make  a  contrast,  more  or  less 
pleasing,  with  the  solemnities  of  tragedy.  If  it  had 
been  the  habit  of  the  tragic  muse  to  employ  tor  its 
heroes,  even  sometimes,  other  than  the  most  illustri 
ous,  perhaps  the  genial  and  generous  humor  which 
was  unknown  to  Greek  dramatic  writing  might  have 
come  in  earlier.  But  neither  the  tragic  nor  the 
comic  poets  seemed  to  care  much  for  the  multitude. 
It  is  interesting  to  consider  what  has  been  the 
tendency  of  the  sentiment  of  pity.  Love  travels 
mainly  on  a  level  or  downward.  Pity,  like  worship, 
tends  upwards.  Tragedy  dealt  with  demigods  and 
legendary  heroes — with  CEdipus  and  Orestes,  with 
Alcestis  and  Medea,  with  Andromache  and  Anti 
gone.  How  have  the  multitude,  forgetting  their  own 
and  one  another's  sorrows,  wept  at  those  of  the  great ! 


1 86  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

Now,  to  relieve  men's  minds  from  such  painful 
solemnities  the  comic  poets,  in  an  age  less  relig 
ious,  less  heroic,  less  fond  of  individual  greatness, 
or  with  contempt  because  the  latter  had  passed  and 
without  expectation  of  its  return,  began  to  select 
from  among  contemporary  characters  those  who 
would  but  could  not,  be  heroes,  and  contrast  them 
with  the  mighty  who  had  lived.  Such  comedy  was 
merely  satire.  It  railed  at  contemporary  life  in 
comparing  it  with  that  of  purer  times.  It  laid 
bare  not  only  the  weaknesses  but  the  meannesses  of 
the  human  heart,  for  the  purpose  of  burlesquing  the 
noble  virtues  which  tragedy  represented.  It  seemed 
at  last  almost  avowedly  depreciatory  of  those  vir 
tues.  "As  tragedy,"  says  Schlegel,  "by  painful 
emotions,  elevates  us  to  the  most  dignified  views 
of  humanity,  comedy,  on  the  other  hand,  by  its 
jocose  and  depreciatory  view  of  all  things,  calls 
forth  the  most  petulant  hilarity."  What  words! 
For  a  "petulant  hilarity"  is  a  hilarity  in  which  there 
is  no  enjoyment  and  from  which  can  proceed  no 
profit.  In  such  representations  there  was  abund 
ance  of  wit.  Attic  salt,  flung  mercilessly  upon  the 
excoriated  flesh  of  the  upstart  and  the  braggart, 
would  make  them  writhe  in  agony,  and  while  the 
spectators  would  shout  they  would  also  curse  with 
laughter.  Humor — humor,  which  is  so  much  broader 
and  kinder  than  wit — seems  not  to  have  been  known. 


THE     DELICACY   OF    SHAKESPEARE.  187 

Instead  of  being  intended  for  the  production  of  the 
innocent  indulgence  in  careless  pastime  while  con 
templating  such  absurd  and  ludicrous  conjunctures 
as,  with  little  or  no  evil,  occur  in  ordinary  life, 
comedy  seemed  to  have  been  intended,  though  in  a 
most  doubtful  way,  to  be  ancillary  to  the  serious 
purposes  of  tragedy.  In  one  of  the  theatres  last 
night  Sophocles  had  excited  to  weeping  the  men  and 
women  of  Athens  by  recitals  of  the  sufferings  of 
CEdipus  and  his  children.  To-night  Aristophanes 
will  lead  them  into  a  house  in  another  street  and 
exhibit  his  play  of  The  B irds,  in  which  the  mannikins 
of  the  time  are  put  in  contrast  with  the  great  of 
Grecian  story.  They  have  become  so  contemptible 
that  the  birds  of  the  air  have  supplanted  them  in 
the  conduct  of  sublunary  affairs.  Even  the  fair 
Iris  with  heavenly  wings,  though  bearing  divine 
messages,  is  chided  for  passing  beyond  the  aerial 
conclave.  The  loud  laugh  will  arise,  but  it  will  be 
a  "  petulant  hilarity,"  with  none  of  the  healthfulness 
that  comes  from  genuine  comic  feeling. 

This  difference  between  tragic  and  comic  writing, 
rather  this  resemblance  between  them,  continued 
almost  until  the  coming  ot  Shakespeare.  In  "  the 
Sacred  Comedy"  following  the  Miracle  Plays  of  the 
middle  age  the  character  that  made  the  fun  was  the 
Devil  himself.  Our  ancestors  laughed  as  well  as 
they  could.  For  man  cannot  always  be  serious. 


I  88  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

He  must  laugh  sometimes,  if  it  can  be  for  nothing 
more  ridiculous,  at  a  pleasant  conceit  of  seeing  the 
great  enemy  fall  into  his  own  pit,  and  beaten,  and 
pinched,  and  made  to  roar  with  pain  and  discom 
fiture.  When  the  time  came  in  England  for  another 
sort  of  fun  upon  the  stage — and  it  seems  wonderful 
how  slow  it  was  in  coming — it  broke  forth  abruptly 
and  about  as  broadly  as  any  who  were  fond  of  the 
broadest  might  ever  care  to  see.  When  an  ecclesias 
tic  of  a  former  age  sometimes,  as  in  the  opinion  of 
Bishop  Bonner,  verged  upon  too  great  liberties  with 
the  Devil  and  the  Vice  in  the  sacred  comedies,  a 
check  was  placed  upon  such  performances,  and 
finally  their  suspension  was  ordered.  But  by  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  such  salutary  re 
straint  had  ceased  to  be  in  vogue,  and  it  seems 
almost  incredible  that  a  play  so  unmixedly  coarse  as 
"  Gammer  Gurtorfs  Nedle"  to  open  the  ball  of 
modern  English  comedy  should  have  been  composed 
by  a  Doctor  of  Divinity,  Lady  Margaret  Professor 
of  Divinity,  prebend  of  Westminster,  Master  of  St. 
John's  and  Trinity  Colleges,  Cambridge,  Archdeacon 
of  Sudbury,  Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells.  But  bishops 
in  the  line  of  Parker  were  not  what  they  used  to  be 
in  the  old  line.  This  one  fell  into  a  humorous  vein 
and,  for  a  preacher,  showed  extraordinary  familiar 
ity  with  the  lowly  and  the  gross  in  English  society, 
and  as  hearty  an  appreciation  of  them  as  any  who 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  189 

could  ever  have  aspired  to  a  gown,  not  mentioning 
lawn  sleeves  and  the  mitre.  There  was  some  frolic 
for  the  boys  of  Eton  College  when  their  head-master, 
Nicholas  Udall(he  a  preacher,  too,  in  the  Parker 
succession),  let  them  present  his  Ralph  R oyster 
Doyster;  but  how  must  the  bigger  boys  at  Christ 
Church,  Cambridge  (where  it  was  first  put  upon  the 
stage),  have  roared  at  the  hair-pulling  of  Dame  Chat 
and  Gammer  Gurton,  and  the  more  than  coarse 
scurrilities  of  Dickon  and  Hodge !  Yet  such  as  these 
were  not  only  the  best  but  the  only.  Such  a  people 
would  not  have  listened  half  an  hour  to  such  as  the 
Captivi  of  Plautus  or  the  Andria  of  Terentius. 
They  were  not  the  people  to  pick  out  the  fun,  what 
there  was,  from  beneath  Greek  or  Latin  roots,  but 
must  have  it  pouring  forth  fresh,  if  muddy  and 
most  foul,  in  homely  vernacular  for  portraying 
scenes  in  contemporary  English  life.  What  that  life 
was  under  Tudor  rule  it  fills  a  delicate,  modest 
mind  with  painful  astonishment  to  contemplate. 
Both  the  tragic  and  the  comic  went  to  their  highest 
heights  and  their  lowest  depths,  and  the  pieces 
which  came  upon  the  stage,  in  order  to  be 
waited  upon  for  their  close  by  an  English  audience, 
must  be  made  to  have  no  stint  of  blood  from  mur 
ders  of  every  kind,  and,  in  the  after-piece,  no  spar 
ing  of  nastiness.  Let  us  see  how  that  consummate 


190  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

young  genius  Marlowe  whetted  keener  the  hatred 
for  the  Jew : 

"I  walk  abroad  a-nights, 
And  kill  sick  people  groaning  under  walls: 
Sometimes  I  go  about  and  poison  wells.  .  .  . 
Being  voung  I  studied  phvsic,  and  began 
To  practise  first  upon  the  Italian; 
There  I  enriched  the  priests  with  burials, 
And  always  kept  the  sexton's  arms  in  use 
With  digging  graves  and  ringing  dead  men's  knells. 
I  filled  the  jails  with  bankrouts  in  a  year, 
And  with  young  orphans  planted  hospitals; 
And  every  moon  made  some  or  other  mad, 
And  now  and  then  one  hang  himself  for  grief, 
Pinning  upon  his  breast  a  long  great  scroll 
How  I  with  interest  tormented  him."' 

In  this  terrible  piece  there  is  neither  pity  from 
Christian  to  Jew  nor  from  Jew  to  Christian.  War 
to  the  last  blood,  anguish  in  extreme,  that  can 
neither  be  increased  nor  diminished — these  were 
what  our  ancestors  three  hundred  years  ago  wished 
to  see  when  war  and  anguish  were  to  be  mimicked 
upon  the  stage.  Not  that  they  were  without  com 
passion  for 

uHem  that  stode  in  gret  prosperite 

And  been  fallen  out  of  her  high  degree," 

but  they  insisted  upon  seeing  the  blood  and  hearing 
the  shriek.  They  preferred  witnessing  the  murder 
ous  combat  to  hearing  it  recited.  The  counsel  of 
Horace  to  the  Pisos  would  have  been  wasted  upon 
them.  He  who  wondered  how  the  Romans  of  the 

*Barabbas  in  "  The  Jew  of  Malta." 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  19! 

foretime  had  endured  the  rudeness  of  Plautus,  and 
were  not  shocked  at  the  unnatural  murder  cor  am 
populo  of  the  children  of  Jason,  would  never  have 
been  seen,  had  he  lived  in  that  time,  at  the  Globe 
or  Blackfriars.  For  that  public  relished  such  as 
these  beyond  all  else.  If  Progne  is  to  be  changed 
into  a  bird  and  Cadmus  into  a  snake,  if  Clytem- 
nestra  is  to  be  slain  at  the  bath  and  the  parricide 
to  be  pursued  by  the  Furies,  that  English  public 
demanded  to  see  how  these  interesting  things  were 
done.  And  then  they  were  ready,  having  had 
enough  of  horrors,  for  the  jest,  and  the  broader 
was  this,  the  shouts  were  louder  and  heartier. 
They  must  have  both.  "An  action,"  says  Mr. 
Hallam,  "passing  visibly  on  the  stage,  instead  of  a 
frigid  narrative,  a  copious  intermixture  of  comic 
buffoonery  with  the  gravest  story,  were  requisites 
with  which  no  English  audience  would  dispense. " 
Illogical,  unreasonable  as  such  demands  seemed, 
they  were  the  foundation  of  the  greatest  dramatic 
literature  of  the  world.  The  wits  who  sought  fame 
or  livelihood  must  conform  to  them.  Fond  as  it  was 
to  shed  tears  of  pity,  it  was  needful  to  wipe  them 
away  in  time  and  afford  a  channel  for  those  of  hi 
larity.  These  two  great  wants  of  the  human  heart, 
so  nearly  connected,  so  necessary  to  each  other,  this 
English  people,  rough  and  unstudying  as  they  were, 
first  asserted  upon  the  stage  in  the  alternate 


192  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

sequence  in  which  they  prevail  in  daily  life.  He 
was  but  half  a  philosopher  who  did  nothing  but 
weep ;  less  than  half  was  he  who  only  laughed. 

It  is  interesting  to  study  the  development  of  this 
dramatic  literature,  and  see  how  it  made  ready  the 
way  for  the  coming  of  Shakespeare.  Dreadful  in 
deed  were  the  things  in  tragedy,  and  revolting  the 
obscenities  in  comedy.  Some  of  the  latter  are  the 
more  extravagant,  but  the  more  venial,  because  they 
were  brought  out,  as  in  the  case  of  poor  Massinger, 
with  reluctant  hands  and  only  for  the  purpose  of 
obtaining  food  and  raiment  for  the  hungry  and  rag 
ged,  and  shelter  for  the  houseless.  Others,  like 
those  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher — both  gentlemen 
born,  and  sufficiently  prosperous — were  congenial 
to  the  minds  which  applauded  the  tastes  and  habits 
of  the  age.  The  greater  genius  of  the  two  died 
young.  The  other,  son  of  the  dean  of  Peterbor 
ough,  who  was  rewarded  with  a  bishopric  for  his 
insults  to  Mary  Stuart  in  the  very  article  of  her 
death,  survived  long  and  worked  up  a  vast  amount 
of  filth  that  was  most  cordially  relished  for  too  long 
a  time. 

Added  to  the  rudeness  of  the  times,  that  made 
such  coarseness  endurable  and  even  preferred,  were 
the  contemporary  rise  of  Puritanism  and  the  ex 
tremes  to  which  hostile  parties  will  sometimes  urge 
their  principles  and  conduct.  The  playgoers  laughed 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  193 

the  heartier  at  the  Four  Ps,  .of  Heywood,  and  the 
Mother  Bombie,  of  Lyly,  thinking  of  the  not  inconsid 
erable  public  outside  who  believed  it  to  be  a  sin  to 
laugh  at  all.  The  satyr  that  these  merry  spirits 
brought  out  from  the  woods,  instead  of  being 
exhibited  in  his  best  attitudes  according  to  the  pre 
cept  of  the  Roman  critic,  was  exhibited  in  his 
worst,  because  there  were  those  to  maintain  that 
the  satyr  should  never  have  been  taken  from 
his  native  wilds.  Yet  that  same  Heywood  could 
excite  to  weeping  in  A  Woman  Killed  with  Kind 
ness,  while  Lyly  could  rise  to  delicate  humor  in 
Midas,  Endymion,  and  Campaspe. 

More  decent  than  those  aforementioned  was  Ben 
Jonson,  more  serious,  more  brave;  but,  lacking  the 
pathos  of  the  tragic  muse  and  having  to  turn  to  the 
comic  in  order  to  be  allowed  to  live  at  all,  it  is  sad 
to  see  how  his  saturnine  nature  struggled  between 
the  classicism  which  he  reverenced  and  the  modern 
broadness  of  humor  which  he  despised,  and  for 
which  he  could  not  forbear  to  substitute  the  satire 
of  Menander  and  Plautus.  He  could  rouse  to 
laughter,  but  it  was  such  as  brought  no  relief  to  the 
heart.  In  Volpone,  for  instance,  the  characters 
intended  to  excite  laughter,  instead  of  being  ludic 
rous,  are  villanous  to  a  degree  that  is  shocking  to 
humanity.  The  laugh  that  arises  from  beholding 
them  has  the  bitterness  of  disgust  and  the  eagerness 

'3 


194  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

of  revenge.  When  the  great  rascal  is  caught  and  is 
writhing  with  the  pain  of  punishment  the  audience 
scream  with  laughter;  but  it  is  such  laughter  as 
we  might  indulge  withal  if  perchance  we  should  see 
a  brute  of  a  man  insult  a  woman  upon  the  streets, 
and  immediately  thereafter  assaulted  by  a  true  man, 
and  beaten,  and  kicked,  and  cowhided,  and  set  on 
by  the  dogs.  Yet  the  witness  of  such  scenes  does 
not  good  to  the  heart  wherein  it  most  needs  good. 
Thus,  Ben  Jonson,  though  rising  to  the  full  dignity 
of  the  Romans,  both  in  his  tragedies  and  his  come 
dies,  yet,  in  want  of  pathos  for  the  former  and 
humor  for  the  latter,  went  behind  those  whom  he 
should  have  preceded. 

Interesting  struggles  those  were  in  the  modern 
English  drama.  The  buskin  beginning  with  solemn, 
stately  Gorboduc,  the  sock  with  Ralph  R  oyster 
Doyster,  and  Gammer  Gurton's  Nedle — how  wide 
apart  were  these,  apparently  how  irreconcilable! 
Writers  like  Sackville  might  be  disgusted  to  think 
how  a  reasonable  public  could  gather  pleasure 
from  the  talks  of  Hodge  and  Doctor  Rat,  and  yet 
desire  to  hear  tell  the  sufferings  of  the  great  of  all 
times.  But  that  people  intended  to  have  all  their 
wants  gratified.  They  meant  to  laugh  with  the  gay 
and  weep  with  them  that  wept;  and  inasmuch  as 
prim  pietists,  becoming  more  numerous  and  more 
prim,  found  fault  with  comic  scenes  of  even  delicate 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  195 

kinds,  and  public  opinion  excluded  women  from 
theatres,  not  only  as  actors  but  as  spectators,  they 
made  their  fun  the  coarser  and  their  laugh  the 
more  uproarious. 

The  theatre  is  the  repertory  of  the  best  literature 
of  the  ages.  From  Sackville,  from  Still  and  Udall, 
the  playwrights  must  study  the  temper  of  the  pits 
and  learn  both  when  it  is  the  time  to  weep  and  when 
the  time  to  laugh.  Tragedy,  having  so  noble  prec 
edents,  easily  led  the  way.  Comedy — comedy 
such  as  it  was  and  ought  to  become,  generous  as  gay, 
sympathizing  as  ludicrous,  comedy  that  was  to  lead 
to  laughter  that  brought  neither  pain  nor  anger — 
had  to  work  its  way  and  be  developed  with  the 
tastes  and  manners  of  society.  In  ancient  times  it 
had  made  men  laugh  the  laugh  of  contempt,  scorn, 
hatred,  and  satisfied  revenge.  Its  newest  laughs 
were  for  the  actions  and  sayings  of  the  lowly  and 
the  vulgar.  The  time  was  not  yet,  but  it  was  com 
ing  fast,  when  it  could  invite  gentlemen  and  ladies 
to  come  together  to  its  recitals,  in  listening  to  which 
they  could  laugh  without  pain  and  without  blushing. 

In  the  lives  of  the  playwrights  what  blending  of 
the  serious  with  the  sportive  will  one  see  who  studies 
them  closely!  How  often  will  he  find  cheerfulness 
among  the  serious,  and — especially — seriousness 
among  the  sportive!  Charles  Reade,  in  Peg  Wof- 
Jington,  makes  Mrs.  Triplett,  on  retiring  from  the 


196  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

stage  at  night,  take  from  her  person  the  finery,  lay 
it  upon  the  table  with  disgust,  and  then  regard  with 
affection  a  cold  sausage  that  she  has  taken  from  her 
pocket.  We  smile  at  the  drollery,  but  simultane 
ously  we  feel  the  tenderness  and  the  sweetness  of 
pity.  Many  a  time  has  the  London  comic  dramatist, 
standing  in  the  street  in  rags,  almost  hatless  and 
shoeless,  certainly  dinnerless,  or  sitting  in  prison 
hard  by,  heard  a  thousand  voices  roaring  to  the  fun 
himself  had  created.  Fortunately  for  mankind,  it 
requires  not  a  habitually  gay  temper  nor  felicitous 
circumstances  to  promote  humorous  compositions. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  he  who  has  the  profoundest 
knowledge  of  the  sadness  of  the  human  heart  who 
can  most  skillfully  touch  the  chords  that  vibrate  to 
humorous  impulsions.  Before  Shakespeare  the  drama 
was  made  up  mostly  of  tragedy  the  bloodiest  and 
farce  the  broadest.  It  was  reserved  for  him  to 
unite  pathos  and  humor  as  they  are  conjoined  in 
human  life,  and  lift  each  as  high  as  human  language 
could  exalt.  These  observations  we  have  made 
preliminary  to  the  consideration  of  what  we  pro 
pose  to  style  the  comparative  delicacy  of  Shakes 
peare.  Of  his  sadness,  and  of  the  predominance 
of  the  serious  over  the  sportive  in  his  character  and 
writings,  we  shall  speak  in  another  article. 

When    Shakespeare    came    to    London,    English 
comedy  knew  little  more  than  the  farce.     The  del  i 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  197 

cate  humor  which  springs  out  of  the  pleasant  phan 
tasies  of  persons  in  polite  society  had  been  introduced 
rarely  and  with  timidity.  Men  who  had  wept  at  a 
tale  of  grief  desired  for  the  after-piece  or  the  inter 
lude  the  relief  which  was  to  come  from  a  great, 
broad  joke.  Whatever  contributions  were  made  to 
the  enjoyment  of  the  playgoers  by  the  young  actor 
who,  having  married  too  early  and  not  well,  had 
left  his  native  Stratford,  little  of  them  has  been 
transmitted  beyond  the  fact  that  he  preferred  and 
sufficiently  well  sustained  the  parts  of  old  men. 
His  heart  already,  it  seems,  had  learned  to  find  its 
best  sympathy  among  those  who,  having  tried  this 
life,  found  it  unable  to  fulfil  its  early  promises.  He 
went  to  the  stage  as  another  man  goes  to  another 
business — to  make  money  for  present  uses  and  to 
lay  up  for  those  of  his  advanced  age.  Finding  that 
there  was  more  money  in  running  the  theatre  than 
acting  upon  its  boards,  he  took  that  business. 
Examining  the  plays  that  were  offered,  whenever  he 
bought,  his  experienced  sagacity  detected  what 
should  be  subtracted,  what  added.  When,  for  want 
of  those  sufficiently  suited  to  his  purposes,  he  under 
took  to  write  them  throughout,  his  genius,  so  all-sided, 
found  soon  how  to  intermingle  the  serious  with  the 
gay  as  he  had  seen  them  intermingled  in  the  habitual 
intercourse  of  daily  life.  Like  all  great  minds,  he 
had,  what  Goethe  properly  styles  reverence  for -man- 


198  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

kind,  for  superiors,  for  equals,  for  inferiors.  He  re 
spected  men  sufficiently  to  know  that  they  could  be 
raised  by  discreet  means  to  appreciate  humor  that 
was  delicate  as  well  as  what  was  rough  and  broad. 
The  world  was  a  stage :  let  the  stage  be  the  world. 
Not  all  who  go  to  festive  scenes  are  gay,  nor  all  at 
funerals  subdued  with  sadness.  On  the  contrary, 
such  is  the  constitution  of  the  human  heart  that  some 
seriousness  renders  more  enjoyable  a  season  of 
gayety,  while  often  on  solemn  occasions  irresistible 
is  the  impulse  to  smile  at  the  sudden  occurence  of 
ludicrous  accidents.  How  inexpressibly  sad  the 
death  of  Ophelia;  yet  who  but  kindred  and  lovers 
can  forbear  to  laugh  at  the  chattings  of  the  diggers 
of  her  grave?  Just  as  men  are  most  fond  to  do 
what  is  forbidden,  so  are  they  most  prone  to  seek, 
as  relief  from  a  surfeit  of  grief,  something  that  comes 
from  the  sportive.  Wise,  therefore,  and  benignant 
is  he  who  provides  such  relief,  and  of  a  kind  that 
will  elevate  instead  of  degrading. 

To  such  a  mind  as  Shakespeare,  we  do  not" doubt, 
such  as  Gammer  Gurton's  Nedle  were  unmix- 
edly  disgusting.  All  remember  the  touching  mel 
ancholy  of  that  complaint,  in  one  of  his  sonnets, 
against 

"  The  guilty  goddess  of  my  harmful  deeds, 

That  did  not  better  for  my  life  provide 

Than  public  means  which  public  manners  breeds." 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  199 

The  rougher  things  in  his  plays  are  doubtless  attribu 
table  to  the  exactions  of  an  age  behind  his  own 
aspirations — exactions  more  powerful  because  of 
the  examples  in  the  houses  of  kings  and  courtiers. 
The  manager  of  a  theatre,  he  must  provide  what 
ever  is  demanded;  but,  if  only  occasionally  and  by 
degrees,  he  will  lead  his  audiences  to  something 
higher  than  they  have  seen,  and  educate  them  to  its 
appreciation  by  making  it  ineffably  beautiful.  He 
will  give  the  rude  jest  when  he  must;  but  whenever 
it  is  possible  he  will  substitute  the  delicate  mirth 
of  genteelness,  and  thus  give  tone  to  a  reasonable 
mean  between  the  tragic  and  the  farcical.  How 
merely  fanciful  are  most  of  his  comedies!  For  as 
yet  the  comedy  of  intrigue  was  little  developed. 
It  was  plain  to  see  that  it  was  a  serious,  even  a  sad, 
mind  that,  in  spite  of  all  this  exquisite  sportiveness, 
saw  beyond  it  into  the  melancholy  that  was  yet  more 
exquisite,  and  felt  that  that  was  the  role  in  which 
was  to  be  done  its  greatest  work. 

Let  us  look  at  Twelfth  Night.  How  fanciful 
this  play!  Yet  for  this  we  have  an  apology  in  its 
first  words,  the  sweetness  of  which  none  but  the  very 
coarsest  could  fail  to  enjoy: 

"If  music  be  the  food  of  love,  play  on; 
Give  me  excess  of  it,  that,  surfeiting', 
The  appetite  may  sicken,  and  so  die. 
That  strain  again!  it  had  a  dying  fall: 
O,  it  came  o'er  my  ear  like  the  sweet  south, 


200  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

That  breathes  upon  a  bank  of  violets, 
Stealing  and  giving  odor.     Enough;  no  more: 
'Tis  not  so  sweet  now  as  it  was  before; 
O  spirit  of  love!  how  great  and  fresh  art  thou, 
That,  notwithstanding  thy  capacity 
Receiveth  as  the  sea,  naught  enters  there, 
Of  what  validity  and  pitch  soe'er, 
But  falls  into  abatement  and  low  price, 
Even  in  a  minute:  so  full  of  shapes  is  fancy 
That  it  alone  is  high-fantastical." 

These  are  the  words  of  the  duke,  who,  for  the 
time,  is  in  love  with  Olivia,  who  will  not  hear  of 
love  until  her  mourning  be  over  for  the  death  of  her 
brother.  What  contrast  between  such  words  and 
thoughts  and  those  when  Cesario,  his  confidant, 
proves  to  be  Viola  in  disguise!  Imperiously,  but 
with  sweetest  airiness,  does  fancy  play  amid  the 
affections  of  all  the  leading  characters.  Viola  takes 
the  disguise  of  a  boy.  Olivia  becomes  enraptured 
with  this  boy  and  will  not  listen  to  the  duke.  Viola 
finds  herself  in  love  with  the  duke,  who,  when  he 
ascertains  her  sex,  retires  from  Olivia  and  thinks 
he  has  never  loved  before.  The  reappearance  of 
Sebastian,  Viola's  brother,  more  than  compensates 
Olivia  for  her  disappointment,  and  the  endings  seem 
like  the  realization  of  those  fond  dreams  in  which 
the  young  of  both  sexes  indulge  on  the  dreamy 
season  of  Twelfth  Night. 

Amidst  all  this  play  and  interplaying  of  the  serious 
and  the  gently  sportive  what  glorious  fun  there  is  in 
the  talks  of  Sir  Toby  Belch  and  Aguecheek,  the 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  2OI 

clown,  Maria  and  Malvolio  !  Entertainment  there 
for  all — boxes,  dress-circle,  pit  and  gallery — polite 
ears  and  vulgar.  Some  of  the  words  for  all  are  to 
become  immortal,  some  for  the  poet  to  dream  about 
and  seek  in  vain  to  imitate,  and  some  for  the  coster- 
monger  to  recall  over  his  pipe  and  mug  of  ale,  and 
roar  at  the  recital. 

The  thoughts  we  are  presenting  are  well  illus 
trated  again  in  As  You  Like  It.  There  is  genuine 
grief  in  the  exile  of  the  banished  duke,  and  genuine 
remorse  in  the  tyrant,  his  brother.  Between  them 
and  the  lowest  characters  comes  in  Jaques,  in 
whom  the  elements  of  seriousness  and  sport  are  so 
blended  as  to  leave  us  in  doubt  what  manner  of  man 
the  author  meant  he  should  be  regarded.  When  we 
hear  him  moralizing  on  the  seven  stages  of  human 
life  we  feel  that  Socrates  nor  Plato  could  have 
talked  more  wisely.  When  we  hear  his  reflections 

"  Under  an  oak  whose  antique  root  peeps  out." 

and  his  "smiles"  upon  a  wounded  stag,  we  are 
touched  with  tenderness.  When  we  see  his  ambi 
tion  for  a  "motley  fool,"  and  hear  him  say, 

"I  have  neither  the  scholar's  melancholy,  which  is  emulation,  nor 
the  musician's,  which  is  fantastical,  nor  the  courtier's,  which  is 
proud,  nor  the  soldier's,  which  is  ambitous,  nor  the  lawyer's,  which 
is  politic,  nor  the  lady's,  which  is  nice,  nor  the  lover's,  which  is  all 
these:  but  it  is  a  melancholy  of  mine  own,  compounded  of  many 
simples,  extracted  from  many  objects,  and  indeed  the  sundry  con 
templation  of  my  travels,  in  which  my  often  rumination  wraps  me  in 
a  most  humorous  sadness," 


202  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

we  feel,  what  exquisite  characterization!  How  im 
mense  the  gap  between  this  and  the  classical  drama ! 
Subtle,  yet  natural ;  like  many  a  man  of  culture  who, 
partly  in  imagination,  partly  in  reality,  wearied  with 
superabundance  of  books  and  courts  and  travel,  in 
dulges  in  thoughts  ever  shifting  between  the  earnest 
and  the  jocose,  claiming  to  sadness,  but  a  sadness 
all  his  own.  In  reading  this  play  it  is  most  pleasing 
to  notice  the  stream  of  melancholy  pervading  it; 
losing  itself  here  and  there  among  such  as  Touch 
stone  and  Aubrey,  and  reappearing  among  the  gifted, 
giving  tone  and  adding  sweetness  to  the  abounding 
humor  that  allows  a  mind  tired  of  business,  or  seek 
ing  relief  from  the  pain  of  recent  witness  of  tragic 
scenes,  to  sport  as  it  pleases,  to  laugh  aloud  or  smile 
archly,  and  sometimes,  if  so  disposed,  to  sigh,  yet 
not  with  pain. 

Whenever  we  read  Midsummer  Night's  Dream 
we  wonder  anew  that  one,  at  the  very  time  of  the 
creation  of  such  as  Bottom,  and  Snug,  and  Flute, 
and  their  likes,  could  have  created  such  as  Oberon 
and  Titania.  In  this  most  poetical  of  human  pro 
ductions,  Shakespeare,  persistent  to  his  purpose  to 
let  the  stage  picture  human  life,  represented  it  not 
only  as  it  is  when  we  are  awake,  but  while  we  sleep 
and  are  dreaming  of  things  impossible.  A  mid 
summer  night's  dream  when  the  night  is  brief,  the 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  203 

woods  and  meadows  serene  and  silent,  inviting  not 
only  to  sleep  but  to  dreams! 

Wise,  benignant  is  the  king,  Theseus,  a  royal  lover, 
on  the  eve  of  marriage  with  the  queen  of  the  Ama 
zons:  noble  words  to  his  espoused,  to  Hermia  and 
the  rest  of  his  court;  wise  words  as  he  discusses  the 
lunatic,  the  lover,  and  the  poet.*  But  what  we 
notice  more  especially  at  this  time  is  the  interlude 
of  the  Dream,  the  waywardness  of  the  fairies  in 
sporting  with  these  high-born  men  and  women  and 
among  themselves.  It  is  a  poor  ,  dull  mind  that 
does  not  sometimes  dream  beautiful  dreams.  Who 
has  not  sometimes  dreamed  of  having  been  endowed 
with  gifts  of  most  excellent  greatness;  of  being  ad 
mitted  within  the  inner  places  of  all  that  is  most  fair 
and  lovely,  and  discoursing  as  with  the  tongue  of  an 
angel?  Yet  if  one  could  reproduce  such  a  vision  it 
might  not  surpass  this  in  which  we  hear  language, 
such  as  no  other  human  tongue  could  have  uttered, 
sounding  upon  the  ear  as  if  in  very  deed  it  had  been 
whispered  to  the  poet  by  the  gentle  spirits  which  he 
had  invoked. 

And  then  to  awake  and  find  it  has  all  been  a 
dream !  What  shall  we  do  next?  Shut  our  eyes  and 
bring  back  the  airy,  sweet  visions?  Ah!  no.  They 
will  not  come  again  to-night;  perhaps,  in  such  in 
effable  beauty,  never  more.  What  shall  we  do,  then, 

*Act  v.  Scene  i. 


204  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

after  having  been  to  the  highest  heights?  Why,  we 
must  even  see  what  fancy  may  have  put  into  the 
heads  of  clowns.  The  courtiers  tell  the  monarch 
what  these  poor  fellows  have  prepared  to  contribute 
to  the  celebration  of  the  approaching  nuptials,  and 
and  they  advise  him  that  it 

"  It  is  nothing-,  nothing  in  the  world." 

Even  the  gracious  Hippolyta  begs 

"  Not  to  see  wretchedness  o'ercharged." 

But  a  wise  king  values  too  much  the  faithful  service 
of  his  lowest  subjects  to  find  fault  with  the  rude 
terms  in  which  it  is  expressed.  Thus  he  speaks  to 
his  bride: 

"I  will  hear  that  play; 
For  never  anything  can  be  amiss 
When  simpleness  and  duty  tender  it. 

The  kinder  we,  to  give  them  thanks  for  nothing. 

Our  sport  shall  be  to  take  what  they  mistake: 

And  what  poor  duty  cannot  do, 

Noble  respect  takes  it  in  might,  not  merit. 

Where  I  have  come,  great  clerks  have  purposed 

To  greet  me  with  premeditated  welcomes; 

Where  I  have  seen  them  shiver  and  look  pale, 

Make  periods  in  the  midst  of  sentences, 

Throttle  their  practised  accent  in  their  fears, 

And  in  conclusion  dumbly  have  broke  off, 

Not  paying  me  a  welcome.     Trust  me,  sweet, 

Out  of  this  silence  yet  I  pick'd  a  welcome; 

And  in  the  modesty  of  fearful  duty 

I  read  as  much  as  from  the  ratling  tongue 

Of  saucy  and  audacious  eloquence. 

Love,  therefore,  and  tongue-tied  simplicity 

In  least  speak  most,  to  my  capacity.1' 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  205 

We  are  glad  the  good  king  did  not  refuse  the 
rendition  of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe.  Irresistibly  funny 
as  it  is,  when  it  threatens  to  become  tiresome  he 
has  the  discretion  to  limit  the  players  to  a  Bergo- 
mask  dance,  omitting  the  epilogue. 

Such  was  the  device,  a  great,  broad  joke,  full  of 
absurdities  and  incongruities,  with  which  this  wisest, 
most  generous,  most  humane  of  poets  let  down  from 
the  contemplation  of  the  fanciful  and  the  impossible. 

But  it  is  The  Merchant  of  Venice  wherein  is  to 
be  seen  the  most  delicate  intermingling  of  the  earn 
est  with  the  different  shades  of  humor,  from  the 
broadest  upward  and  upward,  refining  and  refining 
until  it  grows  into  sadness  and  even  approximates 
the  tragic. 

Already  had  the  Hebrew  been  made  famous  in  the 
drama  by  Marlowe.  But  Bar  abbas  had  been  drawn, 
in  accordance  with  legends  of  too  credulous  times, 
reciting  enormities  practised  in  secret  by  the  Jews 
upon  Christian  peoples.  Bar  abbas,  therefore,  was 
a  monster.  Now,  it  comported  not  with  the  nature 
of  Shakespeare  to  represent  a  character  so  mon 
strously,  incredibly  cruel  and  vindictive.  For  the 
purposes  of  his  comedy  he  sought  to  represent  the 
Jew  what  ages  of  various  fortune  had  made  him. 
In  Shy  lock  we  see  something  of  what  has  been 
wrought  through  immemorial  persecution.  But 
Shakespeare,  who  was  too  great  to  despise  anything 


206  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

which  God  has  made  in  his  image,  while  he  allows 
the  thoughtless  to  laugh,  leads  the  thoughtful  to  pity 
this  man  not  only  for  his  misfortunes,  but  for  his 
wish  for  revenge,  attributing  this  in  part  to  influence 
of  generations  of  outrages,  and  in  part  to  the  cause 
less  insultings  of  the  merchant-prince  who  was  known 
to  have  especial  hate  for  the  "sacred  nation,"  and. 

WHO          «  There  where  merchants  most  do  congregate," 

had  often  railed  upon  this  especial  Jew.  Even  in 
the  act  of  borrowing  the  money  upon  the  fatal  bond 
there  are  insults  that  a  man  with  the  blood  of  a  true 
man  would  find  difficult  to  endure : 

"  SHY.     Signor  Antonio,  many  a  time  and  oft 
In  the  Kialto  you  have  rated  me 
About  my  moneys  and  my  usances: 
Still  have  I  borne  it  with  a  patient  shrug, 
For  sufferance  is  the  badge  of  all  our  tribe. 
You  call  me  misbeliever,  cut-throat  dog, 
And  spit  upon  my  Jewish  gaberdine, 
And  all  for  use  of  that  which  is  mine  own. 
Well,  then,  it  now  appears  you  need  my  help: 
Go  to,  then;  you  come  to  me,  and  you  say, 
'  Shylock,  AVC  would  have  moneys:'  you  say  so; 
You,  that  did  void  your  rheum  upon  my  beard, 
And  foot  me  as  you  spurn  a  stranger  cur 
Over  your  threshold:  moneys  is  your  suit. 
What  should  I  say  to  you?     Should  I  not  say 
'  Hath  a  dog  money?    Is  it  possible 
A  cur  can  lend  three  thousand  ducats?'     Or 
Shall  I  bend  low  and  in  a  bondman's  key, 
With  bated  breath  and  whispering  humbleness, 
Say  this: 

'  Fair  sir,  you  spit  on  me  on  Wednesday  last; 
You  spurned  me  such  a  day;  another  time 
You  call  me  dog;  and  for  these  courtesies, 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  2O7 

I'd  lend  you  thus  much  moneys?1 

"ANT.     I  am  as  like  to  call  thee  so  again, 
To  spit  on  thee  again,  to  spurn  thee  too. 
If  thou  wilt  lend  this  money,  lend  it  not 
As  to  thy  friends  (for  when  did  friendship  take 
A  breed  for  barren  metal  of  his  friend?) 
But  lend  it  rather  to  thine  enemy." 

Now,  when  a  man  has  to  take  such  as  this,  we  ex 
pect  him,  whether  Jew  or  Gentile,  to  try  to  find 
something  adequate  to  give  in  return.  The  poet 
most  adroitly  throws  in  other  things  to  subdue  the 
ruthless  insistence  of  the  penalty  of  the  forfeited 
bond.  The  Jew  loses  from  his  house,  his  heart,  the 
faith  of  his  fathers,  his  only  child,  Jessica,  only 
pledge  of  the  beloved,  departed  Leah.  The 
groundlings  shout  at  the  exploit  of  the  bold  Lorenzo, 
and  hoot  at  the  dog  of  a  Jew  as  he  curses  in  vain, 
and  all,  except  Launcelot  Gobbo,  rejoice  that  an 
other  is  added  to  the  true  faith.  But  the  generous 
consider  how  piteous  is  the  desolation  of  the  parent's 
heart  when  his  only  loved,  his  fully  trusted,  has 
robbed  him,  fled  from  him,  and  been  joined  with  the 
persecutors  of  his  race.  Yet  we  are  spared  the  pain 
of  resentment  against  this  filial  impiety  partly  by 
her  conversion  to  Christianity,  but  mostly  by  the 
childish  simplicity  which  keeps  her  from  compre 
hending  the  depth  of  the  sorrow  into  which  the 
father  has  been  plunged  by  her  elopement.  The 
most  stringent  adherent  for  the  claims  of  parental 
control  might  relent  to  some  degree  while  listening  to 


208  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

her  childlike  talks  with  Gobbo,  and  seeing  her  after 
wards  yielding  to  the  sweet  influences  of  song  when 
she,  so  newly  married,  says : 

"I  am  never  merry  when  I  hear  sweet  music." 

These  preliminary  things  help  to  subdue  our  scorn 
for  the  creditor's  claim.  The  most  indignant  hearer 
may  attempt,  but  will  attempt  in  vain,  to  answer 
quite  successfully  his  arguments  drawn  from  the 
analogies  of  the  treatment  of  his  own  nation  of 
what  should  be  a  Christian's  sufferance  by  Chris 
tian  example.  It  is  such  as  these  that,  while 
the  dramatist  approximated  the  pathos  of  tragedy, 
served  to  keep  him  on  the  hither  side,  and  thus 
create  that  delicious,  delicate  enjoyment  when, 
being  upon  the  verge  of  weeping,  one  experiences 
the  sudden  relief  of  gentle  laughter.  Here  was  the 
subtlest  essence  of  high  comedy. 

But  the  groundlings  must  have  the  unmixed. 
Though  they  have  laughed  at  the  tortures  of  the 
Jew,  yet  it  was  not  the  laugh  of  heartiness  and  of 
health.  For  this  the  author  provided  the  good 
Gobbo,  or  good  Launcelot,  or  good  Launcelot  Gobbo. 
What  an  invention !  Unique  in  the  history  of  comic 
literature  this  compound  of  earnestness  and  fun,  of 
conscientiousness  and  knavery.  He  cannot  be  con 
vinced  that  Jessica1  s  conversion  is  a  matter  for  con 
gratulation,  not  even  on  moral  grounds: 

"Yes,  truly,"  says  he  to  her  after  the  marriage — "yes,  truly;  for, 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  209 

look  you,  the  sins  of  the  father  are  to  be  laid  upon  the  children: 
therefore,  I  promise  ye,  I  fear  you.  I  was  always  plain  with  you, 
and  so  now  I  speak  my  agitation  of  the  matter:  therefore  be  of 
good  cheer,  for  truly  I  think  you  are  damn'd." 

Nor  on  economical: 

"JESSICA.  I  shall  be  saved  by  my  husband:  he  hath  made  me  a 
Christian. 

"  LAUN.  The  more  to  blame  he.  We  were  Christians  enow  before; 
e'en  as  many  as  could  well  live,  one  by  another.  This  making  of 
Christians  will  raise  the  price  of  hogs;  if  we  grow  all  to  be  pork- 
eaters,  we  shall  not  shortly  have  a  rasher  on  the  coals  for  money." 

Here  is  the  most  ludicrous  of  all  those  curious 
characters  who,  having 

"  Planted  in  their  memory 
An  armv  of  good  words," 

"  for  a  tricksy  word 
Defy  the  matter." 

This  is  the  extreme  of  the  humor  of  this  play.  As 
for  the  means,  it  is  pleasing  to  study  how  they  play 
between,  lifting  faomjGobbo  to  Nerissa,  and  thence 
to  Jessica  and  Lorenzo,  and  thence  to  Portia  and 
Bassanio.  Shakespeare  has  been  often  praised  for 
the  compliment  he  paid  to  the  female  sex  in  the 
creation  of  Portia.  A  rich  orphan,  to  whom,  per 
haps  of  all  women,  the  choice  of  a  husband  is  most 
difficult  and  dangerous,  her  conduct  in  the  midst  of 
the  suits  that  are  paid  to  her  is  the  very  perfection 
of  high-born  ladyship.  What  wit  and  what  wisdom 
have  come  to  this  beautiful  heiress !  How  well  she 
understands,  and  how  playfully,  talking  with  her 
maid,  she  cuts  into  pieces  the  Neapolitan  prince,  the 


210  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

County  Palatine,  Monsieur  Le  Bon,  Falconbridge, 
the  Scottish  lord,  the  Duke  of  Saxony's  nephew! 
(Act  i.  scene  ii.)  In  the  treatment  of  the  princes 
of  Arragon  and  Morocco,  men  of  real  worth  and 
serious,  honorable  purpose,  her  deportment  is  our 
best  ideal  of  that  which  a  true  gentlewoman  em 
ploys  in  the  presence  of  a  gentleman  upon  whom, 
though  not  unworthy  of  her  love,  it  is  not  possible 
to  bestowr  it.  When  Bassanio  appears  and  wins 
the  prize  we  may  search  through  all  romance  in 
vain  for  a  subdual  so  complete,  so  frank,  so  delicate, 
so  ineffably  sweet. 

"  Ycm  see  me,  Lord  Bassanio,  where  I  stand, 

Such  as  I  am:  though  for  myself  alone 

I  would  not  be  ambitious  in  my  wish, 

To  wish  myself  much  better;  yet.  for  3^011 

I  would  be  trebled  twenty  times  myself  ; 

A  tho\;sand  times  more  fair,  ten  thousand  times  more  rich; 

That  only  to  stand  high  in  your  account, 

I  might  in  virtues,  beauties,  livings,  friends, 

Exceed  account;  but  the  full  sum  of  me 

Is  sum  of  nothing;  which,  to  term  in  gross, 

Is  an  unlesson'd  girl,  unschool'd,  unpractised; 

Happy  in  this,  she  is  not  yet  so  old 

But  she  may  learn;  happier  than  this, 

She  is  not  bred  so  dull  but  she  can  learn; 

Happiest  of  all  is  that  her  gentle  spirit 

Commits  itself  to  yours  to  be  directed, 

As  from  her  lord,  her  governor,  her  king. 

Myself  and  what  is  mine  to  you  and  yours 

Is  now  converted;  but  now  I  was  the  lord 

Of  this  fair  mansion,  master  of  my  servants, 

Queen  o'er  myself;  and  even  now,  but  now, 

This  house,  these  servants,  and  this  same  myself 

Are  yours,  my  lord:  I  give  them  with  this  ring." 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  211 

Amid  the  first  transports  of  the  accepted  lover 
news  comes  of  the  forfeiture  of  the  bond  of  Antonio. 
At  once  is  seen  how  orphanage,  leaving  her  to  the 
care  of  herself,  has  developed  beyond  the  time  her 
discretion,  her  sense  of  gratitude  and  justice  and 
honor.  Not  a  moment's  delay  will  she  allow  to 
Bassanio,  whom  she  urges  to  fly  to  the  comfort  and 
rescue  of  the  friend  who  suffers  in  his  behalf — 
a  fitting  preparation  for  the  difficult  part  which  is  to 
be  happy  in  its  ending.  Such  is  the  felicitous 
blending  of  the  numerous  colorings  and  shadings 
of  sportiveness  which  have  made  The  Merchant 
of  Venice  the  greatest  of  the  comedies. 

A  few  words  about  Sir  John  Falstaff  will  end 
this  article.  In  the  view  we  have  been  taking  of 
Shakespeare  we  can  find  apt  and  touching  illustra 
tion  even  in  old  Sir  John,  in  the  thread  of  serious 
ness  which,  beginning  though  late,  runs  along  in  that 
great  web  of  humor,  and  finally  absorbs  the  end  that, 
all  tangled,  is  torn  from  the  loom  of  his  life.  Amidst 
all  the  fun  in  Act  i.  Scene  ii.,  ("King  Henry  IV.," 
Part  II.)  there  is  a  touching  sadness  in  the  talk  with 
the  little  page  whom,  out  of  the  drollery  of  a  con 
trast  with  his  gigantic  stature,  the  prince  has  as 
signed  to  him : 

"  FAL.    Sirrah,  you  giant,  what  says  the  doctor  to  my  case? 
"  PAGE.     He  said,  sir,  the  party  that  owed  it  might  have  more  dis 
eases  than  he  knew  for. 
"  FAL.     Men  of  all  sorts  take  a  pride  to  gird  at  me.     The  brain  of 


212  THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE. 

this  compounded  clay,  man,  is  not  able  to  invent  anything- that  tends 
to  laughter,  more  than  I  invent  or  is  invented  on  me,"  etc. 

This  sense  of  humiliation  and  approaching  fri end 
lessness  and  abandonment  exhibits  itself  at  sundry 
times.  The  bold  words  he  employs,  the  rude  jests, 
show  occasionally  that  he  understands  that  his  wit 
and  humor  are  his  only  capital,  and  that  he  supects 
that  they  will  not  last  him  to  the  end.  It  is  really 
melancholy  to  witness  his  last  attempt  to  hold  to  the 
prince  who  is  now  king,  and  hear  his  talk  with  Shal 
low',  his  creditor,  after  the  heartless  repulse,  avowing 
his  assurance  that  His  Majesty  has  snubbed  him  in 
public  merely  for  the  sake  of  appearances,  and  that 
he  will  surely  send  for  him  in  private.  All  the  things 
occurring  henceforth  in  rapid  succession  draw  us 
with  genuine  pity  to  him  who  has  been  so  ruthlessly 
and  shamelessly  forsaken.  The  sudden  reformation 
of  the  youngster  of  a  king  with  the  new-born,  in 
temperate  zeal  of  fresh  reformers  generally ;  the 
poor  spite  of  the  chief-justice,  who,  when  he  has  an 
opportunity,  returns  and  inflicts  a  punishment  greater 
than  was  required,  and  all  because  Sir  John  had  been 
witness  of  his  own  humiliation — all  these  lead  us  to 
feel,  for  the  time  being,  that  the  old  knight,  so  ill- 
treated,  is  worth  more  than  the  king  and  the  chief- 
justice  put  together.  These  last  words  to  the  latter, 
"My  lord,  my  lord,"  are  piteous  in  the  extreme. 
But  the  dignitary  passed  on,  and  the  appeal  was 


THE    DELICACY  OF    SHAKESPEARE.  213 

not  uttered  or  was  unheard.  The  career  of  the 
knight  was  over.  A  mere  jester,  a  man  without 
heart,  might  have  lived  on.  Yet  even  to  those  more 
vulgar  companions,  Hostess  and  Pistol,  Nym  and 
Bardolph,  when  they  hear  that  he  is  sick,  they 
know  that  he  is  sick  unto  death. 

"  XYM.  The  king  hath  run  bad  humors  on  the  knight;  that's  the 
even  of  it. 

"  PISTOL.  Nym,  thou  hast  spoke  the  right;  his  heart  is  fracted  and 
corroborate. 

"  XYM.  The  king  is  a  good  king;  but  it  must  be  as  it  may;  he 
passes  some  humors  and  careers." 

And  the  Hostess  tells  of  his  playing  with  flowers, 
and  babbling  of  green  fields,  and  calling  upon  the 
name  of  God;  and  Bardolph  wishes  he  might  be 
with  him  in  Arthur's  bosom,  whither  the  good  wo 
man  has  consigned  him  "an  it  had  been  any  Christom 
child;"  and  PistoVs manly  heart,  yearning  the  while, 
exhorts  Bardolph  to  be  blithe,  and  Nym  to  rouse 
his  vaunting  veins,  and  they  all  know  that  the  mat 
ter  with  Sir  John  was,  "the  king  killed  his  heart." 
We  may  make  our  pocket-handkerchiefs  wet  with 
laughter  over  such  condolence  of  these  droll 
"lambkins."  And  so  we  laugh  sometimes  at  the 
poor  verses  of  "his  aunty"  or  "his  grandma, "follow 
ing  announcements  in  the  morning  papers  of  the 
death  of  "  a  child. "  But  both  are  the  best  evidences 
that  such  uncultured  hearts  believe  they  can  give  of 
the  sadness  they  feel,  and  their  most  fitting  tribute 
to  the  dead. 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC 
LOVERS. 

HP  HOSE  who  are  familiar  with  Shakespeare's 
Venus  and  Adonis  remember  the  prophecy 
which,  while  writhing  with  anguish  at  the  death 
of  her  lover  from  the  tusk  of  the  wild  boar,  the 
goddess  pronounced  upon  human  loves.  Begin 
ning  thus: 

uSince  thou  art  dead,  lo  here  I  prophesy," 

it  ends  with  the  curse: 

"Sith  in  his  prime  death  doth  my  love  destroy, 
They  that  love  best  their  loves  shall  not  enjoy.1' 

Let  us  consider  how,  mindful  of  these  words,  the 
poet  through  whose  mouth  they  were  uttered,  treated 
of  this  passion  in  its  extreme st  misfortune  during  the 
periods  of  youth,  middle-life,  and  old  age,  the  ardent 
unthoughtful  loves  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  the  conjugal 
cf  Othello,  and  last  of  all,  the  parental  of  King  Lear. 
Shakespeare  was  now  past  his  own  youth,  and  his 
native  seriousness,  deepened  by  accidents  whose 
nature  and  influence  have  never  been  made  well 
known,  was  bound  to  predominate  in  the  repre 
sentations  which  thenceforth  he  was  to  make  of 

human  life.     What  had  been  in  his  boyhood,  and 
214 


SHAKESPEARE'S    TRAGIC    LOVERS.  215 

what  now  was  in  his  married  experience  to  intensify 
the  melancholy  of  his  being,  if  any  of  his  contempo 
raries  knew,  they  did  not  transmit.  Yet  whoever 
has  reflected  upon  what  little  is  known  of  his  per 
sonal  history,  if  he  has  ever  been  in  that  yet  re 
spectable  looking  house  on  a  prominent  street  of 
Strattord-on-Avon,  and  afterwards  wandered  across 
the  fields  to  the  village  of  Shottery,  and  gone  inside 
the  low-roof,  thatched  cottage  wherein,  when  a  lad 
of  eighteen,  he  was  married  to  a  girl  his  senior  by 
many  years,  must  again  speculate  upon  those  Son 
nets  whose  complainings,  never  understood,  are  the 
saddest,  most  piteous  to  be  found  in  all  uninspired 
writing. 

Heretofore  in  his  business  as  a  manager  of  thea 
tres  he  had  worked  mainly  on  the  sportive  side  of 
his  profession  and  had  excited  merriment  of  every 
degree  from  the  jestings  of  clowns  and  wenches  to 
the  sallies  ot  the  highborn  and  cultured.  Yet,  with 
a  humanity  above  all  former  comic  writers  and  a 
delicacy  far  beyond  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  he 
had  paid  respect  to  human  nature  in  every  condi 
tion  of  its  existence.  And  now  when,  though  but 
seven-and-twenty,  he  had  been  a  married  man  ten 
years,  he  essayed  to  let  the  world  witness  the  ful 
fillment  of  the  prophecy,  learn  what  was  meant  by 
the  budding  and  the  blasting  of  love,  its  unjust  sus- 
pectings,  its  foolish  trustings,  its  wretched  inequali- 


216  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

ties,   all  those    elements    which    pitilessly    tend    to 
dissensions  and  discontents  of  every  sort  that 

"  Make  the  young  old,  the  old  become  a  child" 

and  eventuate  in  inevitable  ruin. 

The  circumstances  attending  the  inception  of  the 
loves  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  were  such  as  to  render 
them  eager,  rapid,  absorbing,  irresistible,  and  there 
fore  doomed  inevitably  to  result  in  disaster.  We 
are  not  told  of  the  causes  which  led  to  the  hostility 
between  their  families.  For  the  purposes  of  the 
poet  it  was  sufficient  that  they  existed,  and  that 
they  were  old,  so  old  indeed  that  by  this  time  the 
wrongs  and  the  revenges  of  both  might  be  regarded 
as  about  equal.  In  accordance  with  the  demands 
of  destiny,  the  time  came  for  these  to  have  an  end, 
and  that  by  the  sacrifice  of  innocent  blood.  This 
boy  of  the  Montagues,  and  this  girl  of  the  Capulets, 
too  young  to  have  any  of  the  hereditary  hatred  of 
their  houses,  each  fashioned  in  perfect  kind  for  the 
spring  of  sudden,  passionate  love,  become  involved 
the  more  quickly  and  inextricably  because  of  the 
difficulties  and  the  dangers.  It  was  consummate 
art  to  make  Romeo  tall  in  love  first  with  Rosaline. 
For  in  the  manners  of  a  boy  suffering  with  his  first 
passion  there  is  something  ridiculous;  but  such 
experience  sometimes  leads  to  a  refinement  that  is 
captivating.  This  brief  adventure  was  fitly  pre 
liminary  to  the  instantaneous  recognition  of  the 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS.  217 

superior  charms  of  another  maid,  and  a  learning  of 
the  courtly  arts  by  which  to  make  it  known  and  sue 
for  reciprocation  of  the  feeling  which  it  had  in 
spired.  The  same  art  was  exhibited  in  representing 
Juliet  until  now  without  love's  experience,  and  there 
fore  without  strength  to  resist  its  first  assault. 

Yet,  young  as  both  are,'  they  recognize  the  peril. 
Even  before  the  masquerade  which  Romeo  con 
sented  to  attend  with  Benvolio  and  Mercutio,  his 

"  Mind  misgives 

Some  consequence  yet  hanging  in  the  stars 
Shall  bitterly  begin  his  fearful  date 
With  this  night's  revels,  and  expire  the  term 
Of  a  despised  life." 

So,  Juliet,  appalled  to  find  her  lover  to  be  a 
Montague,  instantaneously  springs  into  womanhood, 
and  muses  thus : 

"  My  only  love  sprung  from  my  only  hate! 
Too  early  seen  unknown,  and  known  too  late! 
Prodigious  birth  it  is  of  love  to  me, 
That  I  must  love  a  loathed  enemy." 

Yet  such  a  love  finds  not  an  end  in  such  discour 
aging  circumstances.  There  is  no  courage  greater 
than  that  of  love  when  it  is  young  and  innocent. 
The  hereditary  hatred  in  their  families  had  served 
only  to  intensify  their  infatuation.  The  ardor  of  the 
boy,  his  recklessness  of  danger,  his  mad  pursuit  of 
this  girl  of  fourteen  years,  into  whose  mind,  on  the 
morning  of  that  very  day,  thoughts  of  marriage  for 
the  first  time  have  been  put  by  her  own  parents, 


218  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

these  were  as  irresistible  as  any  thing  in  the  careers 
of  Oedipus  or  Orestes.  The  poet  took  both  at  the 
spring  of  the  want  that  attracts  to  each  other  man 
and  woman,  and  in  a  situation  of  extremest  peril, 
and  in  order  to  exhibit  the  recklessness  of  youth 
when  the  prospect  of  possession  by  each  of  the 
other,  though  unlicensed,  seems  to  them  to  make 
nugatory  all  preliminary  dangers  and  compensate 
for  all  possible  future  disasters.  What  a  courtship 
was  on  that  starry  night,  as  the  girl  with  the  first 
consciousness  of  the  love  of  a  man,  stood  in  the 
wrindow  of  her  chamber,  while  her  lover,  unseen, 
stood  in  the  garden  below. 

On  the  side  of  his  mother,  Mary  Arden,  Shakes 
peare  had  gentle  blood,  and  his  inheritance  of  gen 
tility  had  been  made  manifest  in  several  of  his 
creations.  So  it  appears  in  the  exquisite  delicacy 
of  this  young  girl's  behavior  in  the  midst  of  her  un 
controllable  feeling.  The  struggle  between  the 
frank  avowal  of  a  love  that  could  not  be  repressed 
nor  concealed,  with  the  fear  of  being  regarded  too 
soon  and  too  easily  won,  makes  a  case  which  not 
only  the  young,  but  those  who  have  long  outlived 
the  times  of  similar  experiences  are  ever  fond  to 
contemplate. 

"  Thou  know'st  the  mask  of  night  is  on  my  face, 
Else  would  a  maiden  blush  bepaint  my  cheek 
For  that  which  thou  hast  heard  me  speak  to-night. 
Fain  would  I  dwell  on  form,  fain,  fain  deny 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS.  2  1 9 

What  I  have  spoke;  but  farewell  compliment! 

Dost  thou  love  me?     I  know  thou  wilt  say,  "Ay," 

And  I  will  take  thy  word;  yet,  if  thou  swear'st, 

Thou  may'st  prove  false;  at  lovers  perjuries 

They  say,  Jove  laughs.     O  gentle  Romeo, 

If  thou  dost  love,  pronounce  it  faithfully: 

Or  if  thou  think'st  I  am  too  quickly  won, 

I'll  frown,  and  be  perverse,  and  say  thee  nay. 

So  thou  wilt  woo;  but  else,  not  for  the  world. 

In  truth,  fair  Montague,  I  am  too  fond, 

And  therefore  thou  may'st  think  my  'havior  light: 

But,  trust  me,  gentlemen,  I'll  prove  more  true 

Than  those  that  have  more  cunning  to  be  strange: 

I  should  have  been  more  strange,  I  must  confess,  t 

But  that  thou  o'erheard'st  ere  I  was  ware 

My  true  love's  passion;  therefore  pardon  me, 

And  not   impute  this  yielding  to  light  love 

Which  the  dark  night  hath  so  discovered." 

How  touching  in  these  words,  the  maidenly  re 
monstrance  and  the  pleading  in  hindering  a  judgment 
which,  in  the  exquisite  bashfulness  of  virtue,  she 
fears  that  she  may  have  deserved!  After  protesting 
against  all  oaths,  except  "by  thy  gracious  self"  and 
briefly,  solemnly  dwelling  upon  the  suddenness  of 
their  mutual  feeling,  she  dismissed  him  with  this 
prayer : 

"  Good  night,  good  night!  as  sweet  repose  and  rest 
Come  to  thy  heart  as  that  within  my  breast." 

Then  we  know  that  consuming  as  the  passion  is 
in  that  young  breast,  it  is  kept  subordinate  to  what 
every  woman,  if  a  gentlewoman,  feels  that  she  must 
recognize  as  entitled  to  a  more  earnest  devotion 
and  a  more  faithful  service.  For  no  man,  more 
clearly  than  Shakespeare  ever  understood  that  the 


220  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

joys  of  love,  even  those  of  briefest,  most  passionate 
continunance,  were  not  worth  the  having  unless 
licensed  by  the  laws  of  God  and  of  men. 

Such  a  union,  coming  in  such  conditions,  must 
have  a  brief  season.  Swiftly,  tumultuously  it  came 
on,  and  as  tumultuously  came  the  end.  Yet  in 
that  brief  season  the  feuds  of  those  two  great  fami 
lies,  in  accordance  with  the  silent  pronouncement 
of  Nemesis,  were  obliterated  by  the  coalescence  and 
the  sacrifice  of  these  innocent  young  spirits.  The 
Muse  of  Tragedy  must  have  her  costly  sacrifice, 
and  the  young  bridegroom  and  his  bride,  like  the 
children  of  the  Argive  mother,  meet  their  happiest 
destiny  in  lying  down  to  sleep  to  wake  no  more. 
The  grief,  the  agonizing  anguish  were  with  the  sur 
vivors. 

In  the  deaths  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  it  is  made  ap 
pear  that  the  justice  which  is  infinite  was  satisfied 
for  the  wrong-doings  of  those  of  whom  they  were 
the  last  and  only  innocent  representatives.  It  is 
pitiful,  but  it  is  instructive,  to  see  those  old  men, 
hereditary  enemies,  take  each  other  by  the  hand 
across  these  graves,  and  wail  and  endeavor  to  con 
sole  each  for  his  own  and  the  other's  dead.  Mon 
tague  raises  a  statue  of  pure  gold  to  the  daughter 
of  Capulet,  and  Capulet  a  similar  to  the  son  of 
Montague.  Costly  as  they  are  they  seem  to  them 
both,  and  are  admitted  to  be, 


SHAKESPEARE  S    TRAGIC    LOVERS.  221 

"Poor  sacrifices  of  our  enmity.  " 

The  lesson  is  the  blessedness  to  the  innocent  in 
being  allowed  to  expiate  the  wrong-doings  of  the 
guilty,  leaving  the  guilty  to  reflect  upon  what  a 
thing  it  is  to  them,  when  for  those  wrong-doings, 
the  innocent  are  sacrificed. 

More  widely  different  could  not  be  the  loves  just 
considered  from  those  of  Othello  and  Desdemona. 
It  is  difficult  to  fix  a  limit  to  our  admiration  for 
the  artist  who  represented  in  such  varying  phases 
"first  and  passionate  love,"  and  that  of  mature  man 
hood.  Not  like  the  instantaneous  infatuation  of 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  the  loves  of  Othello  and  Desde 
mona  were  ot  deliberate,  almost  studied  develop 
ment.  An  inmate  of  the  house  of  Brabantio^  en 
tertained  therein  partly  from  admiration  of  his 
brilliant  achievements,  perhaps  mostly  from  thoughts 
of  the  interest  which  such  condescension  on  the 
part  of  a  powerful  lord  excited  among  the  common 
people,  the  Moor  was  wont  to  speak,  after  invita 
tion  thereto,  of  his  adventures  on  land  and  sea, 
without  suspicion  on  anybody's  part  that  any  un 
common  sentiment  was  to  spring  between  him  and 
the  daughter  of  his  host.  Unlike  Juliet,  who,  at 
the  first  consciousness  of  sex,  was  made  captive  of 
manly  beauty  and  gracefulness,  Desdemona,  after 
some  lapse  of  time,  found  that  her  heart's  affec 
tions  were  following  in  the  train  of  admiration  for 


222  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

this  middle-aged  hero,  and  then,  herself  yet  young, 
without  experience  of  any  sort  except  home  exist 
ence,  became  his  wife.  An  alliance  apparently  so 
unnatural,  the  father,  supported  by  the  common 
sentiment  of  Venice,  attributed  to  magic  until  his 
daughter's  disavowal  when,  overwhelmed  with  dis 
gust  as  well  as  disappointment,  he  withdrew  his 
prosecution,  surrendered  her  to  the  fortune  which 
she  had  selected,  and  turned  his  back  upon  her  for 
ever.  It  was  an  ill-starred  marriage.  Although  a 
hero,  the  Moor  was  of  a  despised  race.  In  such  a 
case,  no  degree  of  individual  merit  can  satisfy  old 
family  pride  or  the  demands  of  aristocratic  society. 
Amidst  all  of  the  admiration  for  this  especial  Moor, 
it  had  never  been  dreamed  that  he  would  aspire  to 
ally  himself  with  a  leading  family  of  this  fairest  of 
Italian  cities,  the  Bride  of  the  Sea.  The  woman 
was  yet  too  young  to  have  imbibed  very  much  of 
this  pride  of  family  and  society,  and  doubtless  she 
had  become  disgusted  with  the  manikins  who 
abounded  in  the  circle  to  which  she  had  been  ac 
customed.  Therefore,  unconsciously  and  irresisti 
bly  she  was  drawn  to  this  barbarian,  who,  despite 
his  advanced  age  and  tawny  color,  seemed  to  the 
eyes  of  a  thoughtful  young  woman  of  more  worth 
than  all  of  those  whose  only  merits  were  that  they 
were  of  the  best  blood  of  Venice,  and  could  show 
the  images  of  ancestors,  rich  and  illustrious. 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS.  223 

Now  it  is  not  allowed  to  appear  that  Desdemona 
had  been  won  solely  by  recitals  of  great  deeds  ; 
but  it  is  shown  that  in  and  about  Othello  were  some 
things  besides  the  record  of  heroic  actions  and  suf 
ferings  which  had  power  to  attract  from  woman 
however  highly  born  and  connected,  not  only  ad 
miration,  but  love.  He  was  not  only  a  scarred  war 
rior,  but,  after  his  kind,  a  gentleman.  It  does  not 
appear  that  he  had  so  informed  Desdemona:  for 
your  true  gentleman  does  not  talk  of  his  ancestry, 
especially  while  in  pursuit  of  ends  that  are  as  deli 
cate  as  desirable.  Yet,  he  was  of  the  best  blood  of 
his  race,  and  therefore  he  could  not  have  been  with 
out  some  of  those  graces  which  in  one  form  and 
another  accompany  the  walk  and  conversation  of 
the  well-born  of  every  race.  It  was  not,  therefore, 
a  love  like  that  of  Pasiphaefor  the  bull,  or  of  Leda 
for  the  Swan,  that  won  this  fair  Christian  girl  to  a 
descendant  of  Ishmael,  but  it  was  such  a  love  as  a 
brave,  gallant  man  may  excite  in  a  woman  who  has 
been  looking  out  for  better  examples  than  she  had 
been  able  to  find  among  her  set  in  social  life.  That 
was  a  touching  evidence  of  the  dignity  becoming 
gentlemen  everywhere,  when,  in  discoursing  with 
lago  on  the  opposition  to  his  alliance,  he  said 

u  'Tis  yet  to  know — 

Which,  when  I  know  that  boasting  is  an  honor, 
I  shall  promulgate — I  fetch  my  life  and  being 
From  men  of  royal  siege,  and  my  demerits 


224  SHAKESPEARES    TRAGIC    LOVERS. 

May  speak  unbonneted  to  as  proud  a  fortune 
As  this  that  I  have  reached;  for  know,  lago, 
But  that  I  love  the  jjentle  Desdeniona, 
I  would  not  my  unhoused  free  condition 
Put  into  circumscription  and  confine 
For  the  Sea's  worth."" 

It  is  the  modestest,  and  the  saddest,  yet  it  is  also 
the  manfulest  assertion  of  self-respect  that  is  to  be 
found  in  literature.  It  ought  not  to  surprise  very 
much  that  a  man  who  could  speak  thus  on  such  a 
theme  would  draw  to  him  a  young  woman  like  Des- 
demona,  who,  as  he  felt,  in  consenting  to  become 
his  wife  had  made  no  social  or  family  condescen 
sion,  nor  had  lifted  him  to  a  connection  higher  than 
that  in  which  he  had  been  born.  Yet,  to  the  Ve 
netians  this  warrior  with  the  record  of  a  thousand 
exploits  such  as  the  young  men  of  Venice,  even  of 
the  best  families,  were  incapable  of  performing  was, 
at  last,  only  a  Moor.  If  this  girl  had  been  older 
and  more  addicted  to  society,  doubtless  she  might 
have  been  influenced  by  prejudices  regarded  by 
society  salutary  to  the  preservation  of  its  exclusive- 
ness;  for  such  society  assumes  to  feel  that  it  is  bet 
ter  to  be  destroyed  utterly  than  admit  willingly  one 
drop  of  contamination.  As  it  was,  because  she 
could  not  do  otherwise,  she  yielded  to  the  charm 
which  came  with  sach  natural,  generous,  lordly  ap 
proach,  and  bestowed  her  whole  self  upon  the 
brave,  weather-beaten,  almost  aged  warrior.  It 
was  a  marriage,  I  repeat,  not  under  propitious  stars. 


SHAKESPEARE  S    TRAGIC    LOVERS.  225 

It  was  without  parental  blessing  which  it  is  always 
dangerous  to  forego.  The  poet,  with  delicate  fore 
sight  of  tragic  results  took  away  this  auspice  so  be 
nign  to  nuptial  solemnization.  The  young  virgin 
went  forth  from  her  father's  house  without  his  beni- 
son,  and  was  joined  with  a  man  of  a  foreign  race. 

"Declined 
Into  the  vale  of  years," 

of  a  race  not  only  regarded  by  her  own  as  its  infer 
ior,  but  one  prone  to  jealousy  of  its  women,  which 
of  all  the  enemies  of  conjugal  prosperity,  is  the 
most  malignant  and  dangerous. 

Yet,  if  no  disturber  come  between,  with  such 
loftiness  of  soul  in  one,  and  such  single  devoted- 
ness  in  the  other,  their  wedded  life  may  be  safe  in 
its  felicity,  and  friends  of  both  might  hope  to  see 
how  the  softening  influences  of  the  accomplished 
Venetian  woman  will  subdue  in  time  whatever  is  too 
barbaric  in  the  being  of  this  descendant  of  the 
Kings  of  the  Desert. 

One  of  the  most  consummate  of  the  creatures  of 
the  imagination  islago.  Drawing  a  man  the  most 
abjectly  evil  of  his  kind,  the  artist,  at  an  early  stage 
in  his  work,  seemed  to  feel  that  he  must  apologize 
for  human  nature  in  the  person  of  this,  its  worst 
representative,  by  a  semblance  of  something  tend 
ing  to  show  that  villany  so  diabolic  could  not  have 
been  perpetrated  without  at  least  some  suspicion  of 


226  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

provocation.  lago,  a  married  man  himself,  hus 
band  of  a  woman  of  a  levity  unbecoming  a  wife, 
had  already  learned  to  hate  the  Moor  with  the 
hatred  that  a  mean  spirit  feels  for  the  good  and  the 
gifted.  Yet  we  are  spared  the  greatest  rudeness  of 
the  shock,  and  we  are  permitted  to  retain  our  incredu 
lity  in  the  absolute  diabolism  of  any  human  being 
by  finding  that  this  wretch  has  persuaded  him 
self  that,  as  a  husband,  he  has  against  the 
Moor,  some  occasion  of  resentment,  or  of  possible 
resentment,  a  possibility  springing  mainly  from  the 
consciousness  of  his  own  limitless  inferiority,  but 
which,  with  a  spirit  so  abjectly  vile,  is  as  effectual 
as  proof  most  positive  in  raising  and  fomenting  the 
spirit  of  revenge. 

And  now  if  ever  "the  guilty  goddess  of  harmful 
deeds"  followed  a  course  of  conjugal  life  with  a 
pursuit  insatiate  in  pitilessness,  it  was  this.  For 
the  extremest  demands  of  tragedy  there  must  be  in 
the  beginning  the  existence  or  the  appearance  of 
perfect  fidelity.  On  the  part  of  the  wife,  added  to 
an  all  absorbing  love  of  her  husband,  a  love  won  by 
the  manfulness  of  his  spirit  without  help  from  ad 
ventitious  accidents,  as  youth,  beauty,  and  social 
connections,  there  was  the  innocence  which  in  its 
own  pure  sweet  atmosphere,  knew  not  and  believed 
not  either  of  enmity  or  other  form  of  evil  else 
where.  One  a  hundred  times  over  may  read  the 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS.  227 

talk  between  her  and  Emilia  on  the  night  of  the 
murder,  and  he  will  admire  more  and  more  the  art 
ist  who  thus  could  paint  a  mortal  woman,  and  while 
keeping  her  mortal  to  the  last,  make  her  so  like  the 
celestial.  Surely  conjugal  purity  was  never  set 
forth  in  such  excellent  beauty.  Her  very  ignorance 
and  unbelief  of  evil  are  what  have  made  her  so 
liable  to  be  betrayed  and  destroyed. 

"Dost  thou  in  conscience  think — tell  me  Emilia — 
That  there  be  women  do  abuse  their  husbands 
In  such  gross  kind?" 

The  lower  woman,  the  woman  of  the  world,  has 
to  admit  that  there  are  exceptional  instances,  that 
all  women  are  not  like  the  spotless  who  thus  inter 
rogates.  Yet  she  would  not  believe  such  things  to 
be  possible  with  any.  This  innocence,  this  igno 
rance,  this  incredulity  hindered  her,  until  too  late, 
from  discovering  what  has  so  perplexed  and  estranged 
her  husband;  and  when  she  has  discovered,  instead 
of  indulging  in  resentment  for  the  wrong  done  to 
her,  a  wrong,  in  her  imagination,  so  foul,  that  the 
poorest  and  most  abject  of  women  are  incapable  of 
deserving  it — she  only  utters  one  sorrowful  appeal 
in  behalf  of  all  her  sex,  and  makes  them  partners 
and  companions  in  her  grief  when  she  cries, 

"Oh  these  men,  these  men!" 

In  this  cry  there  is  piteous  utterance  of  the  be 
lief  that  but  for  the  overpowering  seducings  of  man 


228  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

there    is    no    woman    who  would    not    be   clean. 

Yet  the  outrage  subtracts  not  from  her  conjugal 
affection.  She  who  might  have  cursed,  kneeled  to 
beseech. 

"Alas,  lago! 
Good  friend,  go  to  him. 

Here  I  kneel: 

If  e'er  my  will  did  trespass  'gainst  his  love, 
Either  in  discourse  of  thought  or  actual  deed, 
Or  that  mine  eyes,  mine  ears,  or  any  sense 
Delighted  them  in  any  other  form, 
Or  that  I  do  not  and  ever  did, 
And  ever  will — though  he  do  shake  me  off 
To  beggarly  divorcement — love  him  dearly, 
Comfort  forswear  me!     Unkindness  may  do  much: 
And  his  unkindness  may  defeat  my  life, 
But  never  taint  my  love." 

So,  true  to  the  honorable  behests  of  her  last  con 
dition  she  gave  instructions  that  her  body  shall  be 
wrapped,  not  in  her  virgin,  but  her  bridal  robes,  so 
that  such  witness,  fragile,  unsubstantial,  mute  though 
it  be,  of  the  loyalty  that  was  unrecognized  and  out 
raged  in  life,  may  accompany  her  into  the  grave. 

Yet  the  deepest  compassion  in  this  drama  is  not 
for  the  sufferings  of  Desdemona.  In  the  death  of 
the  innocent,  even  when  wrought  by  violence,  the 
sorrow  we  feel  is  subdued,  I  might  almost  say, 
sweetened  by  recollection  of  what  was  its  most  ex 
cellent  beauty,  and  by  our  thoughts,  that  instead  of 
being  destroyed,  it  has  been  translated  to  an  estate 
more  fit  for  its  abode.  The  tenderest  wish  which 
we  can  make  for  sinlessness  when  persecuted,  is  that 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS.  229 

its  sufferings  may  be  not  long  protracted,  but  that  it 
may  be  allowed  soon  to  fly  away  to  its  native 
Heaven.  There  is  something  we  know  not  what, 
in  the  quick  death  of  the  innocent,  which,  instead 
of  repelling,  attracts  us,  we  know  not  how.  Our 
minds  associate  them  with  those  who  attained  martyr 
dom  which  we  are  taught  to  regard  the  supremest  of 
earthly  felicities.  So  we  thought  of  Virginia,  whom 
her  father's  knife  saved  from  the  Decemvir's  outrage. 
So  of  Agnes,  with  Thecla  sharing,  after  the  Virgin 
Immaculate,  the  chiefest  distinction  of  purity:  so  of 
Cecilia,  the  blind  custodian  of  the  Catacombs :  so 
of  Philomena,  martyr  of  the  Tiber,  whose  turbid 
waves  bore  up  her  fair  chaste  body,  as,  with  a  light 
above  its  forehead,  it  glided  along  down  to  the  sea. 
The  very  silence  and  apparent  painlessness  in  the 
deaths  of  the  young  and  harmless  will  not  admit  the 
anguishing  sympathy  which  we  feel  when  the  expe 
rienced,  the  strong,  the  valiant,  the  violent  are  over 
come.  The  birdling  opens  its  tiny  beak,  and  chir 
rups  before  the  robber  as  blithe  and  as  pleading  as 
when  its  parent  has  returned  to  the  nest,  and  it 
dies  without  a  quaver  and  without  even  a  fluttering 
of  its  young  wings.  Not  so  the  eagle,  experienced 
in  warfare,  rapine,  and  slaughter,  who,  when  met 
with  his  conqueror,  battles  to  the  last,  both  when 
aloft  and  when  prostrate,  and  death  finds  him  rol 
ling  his  fiery,  unvanquished  eyes,  and  thrusting  with 


230  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

his  talons.  Such  an  ending  we  witness  with  tumul 
tuous  sympathy,  and  our  very  hair  stands  on  an  end 
before  the  last,  heroic,  desperate  struggle  of  one  so 
brave. 

So  in  silence  and  not  in  overpowering  grief  we 
take  the  clean  body  of  this  young  bride,  and  lay  it 
in  the  tomb.  Then  we  turn  to  contemplate  the  sur 
vivor!  The  poet,  who  well  understood  these  vary 
ing  influences,  claimed  our  deepest  sympathy  for 
the  greatest  sufferer;  and  herein  he  surpassed  not 
only  all  other  artists,  but  himself,  and  then,  going 
back  to  Stratford,  he  wrote  no  more. 

Let  us  briefly  study  the  situation  of  Othello.  He 
had  not  formally  wooed  Desdemona.  A  foreigner, 
of  a  despised  race,  no  longer  young,  never  having 
studied  nor  desired  to  learn  the  arts  that  specially 
please  women,  he  found  himself,  unexpectedly  to 
himself,  beloved  of  a  young  woman  of  one  of  the 
first  families  in  Venice,  and. soon  thereafter  became 
her  husband.  If  she  had  been  wise  as  she  was  vir 
tuous  and  fond,  she  would  have  been  able  to  under 
stand  and  thwart  the  machinations  of  her  own  and 
her  husband's  enemy.  In  the  absence  of  all  pru 
dential  preventives,  the  inequalities  of  that  union 
inevitably  recurring  to  his  own  mind,  aided  by  ex 
terior  insidious  suggestion,  began  to  frighten  him. 
To  a  great,  brave  spirit  fear  is  the  most  anguishing 
of  emotions  because  most  incompatible  with  what  has 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS.  231 

made  such  a  spirit  what  it  is,  and  hitherto  has  been  its 
most  animating  incentive.  It  thrills  us  to  witness  the 
struggles  of  a  generous  and  naturally  unsuspecting  man 
with  a  subtle  enemy  on  a  field  whereon  it  has  had  no 
experience  yet  on  which  are  things  to  fight  for  that  are 
a  thousand  fold  more  dear  than  all  those  for  which 
the  battles  of  a  score  of  years  have  been  fought  and 
won  elsewhere.  How  that  grand  spirit  writhed 
with  the  sense  of  incompetency  for  the  exigencies 
of  this  new  warfare,  when  it  must  condescend  to 
appeal  from  the  injustice  of  their  having  been  de 
volved  upon  him !  How  unlike  a  brave  man,  how 
pitiful  these  words, 

"Haply,  for  I  am  black, 

And  have  not  those  soft  parts  of  conversation 
That  chamberers  have,  or  for  I  am  declined 
Into  the  vale  of  years." 

Herein  was  a  momentary  humiliation,  a  shame 
faced  self-contemning  like  that  of  a  lion  when  in 
volved  in  the  toils  that  came  invisible  as  they  were 
innumerable.  Yet  how  noble  the  struggle  for  re 
covery,  when,  his  native  courage  recovering  its  poise, 
he  sought  to  console  himself  by  comparing  his  own 
with  the  misfortunes  common  to  the  great 

"  Yet,  'tis  the  plague  of  great  ones; 
Prerogatived  are  they  less  than  the  base: 
'Tis  destiny  unshnnnable,  like  death!" 

Pathetic  almost  beyond  degree  it  is  to  see  this 
struggle  in  the  bosom  of  a  hero,  and  his  conscious 


232  SHAKESPEARE  S    TRAGIC    LOVERS. 

loss    of  manhood  with  the  loss  of  domestic  honor. 
When  he  has  bidden  farewell  to 

"The  plumed  troop  and  the  big  wars, 

The  neighing  steed,  and  the  shrill  trump, 

The  spirit-stirring  drum,  the  ear-piercing  fife, 

The  royal  banner  and  all  quality, 

Praise,  pomp,  and  circumstance  of  glorious  war," 

we  know  that  he  feels  that  this  last  defeat  has  un 
done  all  the  achievements  of  a  career  unrivalled  in 
glory,  and  has  remanded  him  to  the  lowest  of  the 
barbarians  among  whom  he  sprang.  Henceforth 
the  strife  was  most  feeble  and  most  vain.  The  van 
quished  hero  shorn  of  his  glory,  descended  to  the 
level  of  the  basest,  most  cowardly.  Yet,  to  my 
thinking,  in  all  dramatic  literature  there  is  nothing 
more  pathetic  than  that  last  effort  to  rebound  once 
more  and  undo  whatever  was  possible,  when,  after 
one  brief  humble  appeal  for  commutations  of  men's 
opinions  by  recital,  not  of  the  vast  historic  services 
which  he  had  rendered  to  the  commerce  of  the  mer 
chant  princes  of  Europe,  he  told  of  a  single  private 
action : 

"In  Aleppo  once 

When  a  malignant  and  a  turban'd  Turk 
Beat  a  Venetian  and  traduced  the  State, 
I  took  by  the  throat  the  circumcised  dog 
And  smote  him — thus.1' 

And  now  let  us  contemplate  briefly  in  King  Lear, 
that  last  stage  when,  having  survived  most  of  the 
passions  which  were  contemporary  with  youth,  man- 


SHAKESPEARE  S    TRAGIC    LOVERS.  233 

hood,  and  middle  age,  an  old  man  leaned  for  sup 
port  upon  the  young,  whose  dependence  upon  him 
had  developed  what  perhaps  is  the  most  powerful  of 
human  loves.  King  Lear  was  the  most  notable  ex 
emplar  of  that  class  of  aged  men  who  in  the  over 
weening  and  always  impossible  desire  to  receive 
from  their  children  as  much  affection  as  they  bestow 
upon  them,  do  violence  to  that  tender  relationship  and 
become  involved  inextricably  in  mistakes  and  disas 
ters.  This  is  most  natural  and  the  most  to  be  pitied  of 
all  the  infirmities  of  old  age.  Whenever,  as  in  the  case 
of  Lear,  such  wish  becomes  active,  and  a  father 
seeks  among  his  children  for  the  purpose  specially 
and  avowedly  of  rewarding  those  who  seem  to  him 
to  satisfy  that  impossible  standard,  he  is  certain, 
from  the  very  nature  of  things  to  make  the  most 
unfortunate  choice.  It  was  therefore  not  a  mere 
fancy  of  Shakespeare  nor  of  the  old  legend-gatherer 
from  whom  he  borrowed  the  theme  for  his  drama, 
that  this  father  should  reject  from  his  heart  and  from 
share  in  his  power  such  as  Cordelia  who,  among  his 
children,  was  the  one  who  responded  most  dutifully 
to  his  affection.  With  such  a  man,  who,  as  after 
wards  Regan  said  of  him,  had 

"Ever  but  slenderly  known  himself," 

now  lapsed  into  dotage,  making  the  usual  mistake  of 
senility  in  conceiting  that  he  is  wiser  than  ever  be 
fore,  unless  all  of  his  children  are  true  to  him,  one  an- 


234  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

other,  and  themselves,  he  is  sure  to  become  the  victim 
of  those  who  are  not.  The  parent  who  makes  such  a 
choice,  if  it  be  accepted  and  ratified  by  the  chosen, 
has  made  the  worst  choice  possible  because  choos 
ing  at  all  in  such  conditions  is  wicked  and  unnat 
ural. 

If  such  things  be  true  in  ordinary  families,  how 
much  more  striking  their  truth  in  the  houses  of 
mighty  kings  when  the  prize  of  such  a  contest  is  in 
vestment  with 

''Power, 

Pre-eminence,  and  all  the  large  effects 
That  troop  with  majesty." 

For  such  a  prize,  when  inheritance  is  not  to  de 
volve  according  to  ascertained  fixed  order,  rivalries 
for  succession  begin  before  the  father  has  grown  old. 
The  ambitious  who  are  evil-minded  already  have 
been  studying  the  arts  to  be  employed  in  possible 
contingencies,  and  parted  from  the  filial  piety  which 
the  aged  value  more  than  all  earthly  possessions, 
even  though  these  be  kingly  crowns.  Even  in  king 
doms  that  are  hereditary,  the  reigning  monarch  is 
not  often  well  loved  by  the  heir-apparent,  particu 
larly  when  the  former  is  thought  to  be  living  too 
long.  Mournful  it  is  in  the  lives  of  the  aged,  es 
pecially  if  the  places  which  they  fill  are  much  to  be 
desired,  that  those  who  are  expecting  to  occupy 
sometimes,  if  only  in  secret,  complain,  that  they 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS.  235 

linger  in  them  so  long.  Few  things  upon  this  earth 
are  more  to  be  compassionated  than  the  fond  vain 
yearnings  of  an  old  man  for  continuance  in  full  of 
the  loves  which  were  inspired  in  his  former  time. 
It  rends  the  heart  to  read,  in  that  terrific  satire  of 
Swift,  of  the  neglect,  the  friendlessness,  the  con- 
temptibility  of  those  few  upon  whom  had  been  con 
ferred  the  gift  of  earthly  immortality.  Ludicrous 
as  was  the  fate  of  Tithonus,  the  lover  of  Aurora,  to 
whom  in  her  fondness  she  granted  the  request  that 
he  might  not  see  death,  yet  to  a  thoughtful  mind  it 
is  sad  to  contemplate  him  when,  grown  old,  having 
survived  all  the  contemporaries  of  his  youth,  lost  in 
beauty,  and  strength,  and  capacity  to  love  the  things 
of  earth,  he  prayed  for  the  boon  to  be  taken  back, 
and  the  goddess,  who  could  not  comply,  gave  him 
in  derision  the  metamorphose  of  a  grasshopper. 
Poor  old  Wycherley,  who  had  been  in  his  youth  a 
charmer  of  men  and  women  by  his  graces  and  his 
powers  in  the  comic  drama,  used  to  stand  before  his 
mirror,  and  shed  tears  for  the  decay  of  the  beauty 
which  had  been  the  chiefest  source  of  his  pride.  On 
the  other  hand,  Zeno,  founder  of  the  Stoic  School, 
hanged  himself  because,  at  the  age  of  ninety-eight, 
his  strength  was  insufficient  to  endure  the  pain, 
which,  for  sixty  years  he  had  taught  to  be  no  evil. 
It  is  interesting  to  read,  in  Cicero's  De  Senectute^  of 
the  domestic  rule  of  Appius  Claudius;  but  more 


236 

touching  of  the  dread  of  Old  Cato  that,  having  sur 
vived  Marcus,  his  best  beloved,  the  time  of  his  own 
departure  to  the  blessed  fields  whither  this  son  had 
gone,  would  be  too  late  prolonged.  He  is  the  most 
blest  representative  of  advanced  age,  in  whom  Heav 
en  in  its  mercy,  subdues  love  of  the  world,  but  tem 
pers  both  the  wish  to  remain  and  the  longing  to  de 
part,  whom,  in  the  words  of  Goethe,  it  allows  to  be 
"unresting,  unhasting,  like  a  star. "  The  saddest  of 
all  things  in  the  lives  of  the  superannuated,  saddest 
for  them  and  for  the  young,  is  that  the  poor  rem 
nant  of  what  was  once  abundant  sometimes  has  to 
be  sold  and  purchased,  and  for  a  consideration  more 
than  the  little  all  which  the  buyer  has  to  give,  but 
with  which  it  is  impossible  for  the  seller  to  be  sat 
isfied. 

These  thoughts,  it  seems  to  me,  and  others  far 
more  profound,  were  in  Shakespeare's  mind  while 
constructing  this  drama.  The  fond  King  Lear, 
weary,  or  imagining  himself  to  be  weary  of  empire, 
meaning  to  dispose  his  great  Estate  so  that  he  may 

"Unburden'd  crawl  toward  death." 

vainly  hoping  that  he  may  avoid  the  general  lot  of 
kings,  and  be  able  to  repose,  during  the  remainder 
of  his  life  upon  the  love  and  gratitude  of  at  least 
some  of  his  children,  made  his  choice.  Employing 
a  standard,  of  all  the  one  most  illusory,  he  chose 
wrong.  What  followed  the  poet  told  in  words  which 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS.  237 

make  even  the  young  grow  pale  to  think  what  may 
befall  the  last  days  of  the  careers  of  even  the  great 
est  among  mankind.  None  but  a  seer  who  was 
most  profound  in  the  knowledge  of  the  human  heart 
could  thus  have  presented  the  various  phases  in  that 
wretched  decline.  Yet,  as  in  the  case  of  lago,  whom 
he  was  both  too  humane  and  too  wise  to  let  be  with 
out  some  excuse  for  atrocities  which  otherwise  would 
have  appeared  diabolical,  and  therefore  incredible, 
so  with  these  two  daughters,  Regan  and  Goneril, 
"the  unruly  waywardness  that  infirm  and  choleric 
years  bring  with  them"  was  such  as  to  be  wholly  in 
consistent  with  their  changed  relations,  thus  making 
some  foundation,  insufficient  as  it  was,  for  conduct 
not  wholly  inexcusable  in  its  inception. 

Goneril — "Did  my  father  strike    my  gentleman   for  chiding  of  his 
fool?" 

Oswald — "Yes,  madam." 

Goneril — "By  day  and  night  he  wrongs  me;  every  hour 
He  flashes  into  one  gross  crime  or  other, 
That  sets  us  all  at  odds:  I'll  not  endure  it: 
His  knights  grow  riotous,  and  himself  upbraids  us 
On  every  trifle." 

The  monarch  had  not  considered  that  these  daugh 
ters  must  have  inherited  some  of  the  spirit  which 
had  made  their  father  a  ruler  of  mankind.  Then, 
when  he  had  laid  aside  the  burdens  of  empire,  he 
had  not  believed  that  therewith  he  was  parting  from 
control  of  all  who  were  about  him;  for  it  had  been 
stipulated  that  he  was  to  .retain, 


238  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

"The  name  and  all  the  additions  of  a  king." 

Vain  as  were  such  expectations,  they  were  natu 
ral  to  a  superannuated  monarch,  upon  whom  the 
ambitions  of  absolute  autocracy  had  palled.  The 
poet  set  down  subsequent  things  in  careful  sequence 
in  order  to  prepare  for  the  fearful  catastrophe  of 
disappointment.  What  these  were  I  need  not  recall 
first  astonishment  at  the  insults  of  Goneril,  his  in 
dignant  turning  Irom  her  to  Regan,  his  answer  to 
the  latter  when  she  counselled  him  coldly  to  return 
to  Goneril  and  acknowledge  that  he  had  wronged 
her,  the  sense  of  humiliation  in  entreating  from  his 
children  the  consideration  due  to  his  age  and  rela 
tionship;  his  prayer,  instead  of  fighting  with 
"women's  weapons",  to  be  "touched  with  noble  an 
ger";  his  pitiful  deprecation  of  madness,  and  that 
threat  of  vengeance  that  becomes  the  veriest  embit- 
terment  of  terror  when  his  own  instincts  make  sure 
that  he  will  have  power  to  fulfill  it.  Appalling  is  the 
energy  with  which  the  outraged  father  prosecuted 
his  threat;  his  going  forth  into  the  pelting  storm, 
baring  his  aged  head  to  the  blast,  suffering  of  cold 
and  hunger,  all  for  the  purpose  of  heaping  up  wrath 
upon  the  children  who  had  dishonored  him !  Sure 
ly  to  no  other  man  not  inspired  came  in  such  meas 
ure  as  to  this  poet  the  gift  to  employ  the  language 
of  grief  and  imprecation.  Burning  indeed  were 
the  words  of  Prometheus  when  to  all  the  elements 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS.  239 

he  complained  of  the  remorseless  infliction  of  un 
merited  suffering.  But  even  this  passion  consumed 
not  as  that  of  old  Lear  when  his  age  was  outraged 
by  the  chosen  ones  of  his  heart.  When  we  heard 
his  curses,  we  shrank  aghast,  because  we  know 
that  heaven,  next  to  disobedience  to  itself  abhors 
the  dishonor  put  upon  a  parent's  head  and  we  could 
foresee  all  the  horror  of  the  retribution. 

The  brief  season  of  softness  when  he  and  the 
cast-out  Cordelia  have  met  in  misfortune  and  recon 
ciliation  is  as  natural  as  it  is  exceeding  sweet. 

Cordelia — "Shall  we  not  see  these  daughters,  and  these  sisters?" 
Lear —        uNo,  no,  no,  no!     Come,  let's  away  to  prison: 
We  two  alone  will  sing  like  birds  i'  the  cage; 
When  thou  dost  ask  me  blessing,  I'll  kneel  down, 
And  ask  of  thee  forgiveness:  So  we'll  live, 
And  pray  and  sing,  and  tell  old  tales,  and  laugh 
At  gilded  butterflies,  and  hear  poor  rogues 
Talk  of  Court  news:  and  we'll  talk  with  them  too, 
Who   loses  and  who  wins;  who's  in,  who's  out; 
And  take  upon's  the  mystery  of  things, 
As  if  we  were  God's  spies:  and  we'd  wear  out 
In  a  wall'd  prison,  packs  and  sects  of  great  ones, 
Thnt  ebb  and  flow  by  the  moon." 

In  this  ignoring  of  the  very  existence  of  his  in- 
grates,  is  a  terror  yet  more  fearful  than  while  the 
imprecations  were  pouring  from  his  burning  tongue. 
A  brief  season  of  sweetness,  vain  as  an  old  man's 
dream  of  the  returning  of  his  youth,  then,  one  more 
agony, — the  death  of  Cordelia — and  one  more 
act  of  vengeful  strength — the  slaying  of  her  assassin. 
It  is  grand  to  see  in  this  revulsion  momentary  revi- 


240  SHAKESPEARE'S  TRAGIC  LOVERS. 

val  of  the  mighty  power  which  he  had  been  wont  to 
exert  in  the  day  of  his  prime.  It  was  like  the  last 
act  of  Samson,  who,  when  subdued  and  captive, 
summoned  the  remains  of  his  giant  strength,  and, 
in  his  own  ruin,  overwhelmed  his  enemies. 

Perhaps  the  most  delicate  and  subtle  tenderness 
in  this  drama  is  in  that  portion  wherein  are  told  the 
relations  of  Lear  with  his  Fool.  The  Fool  was  an 
indispensable  minister  in  ancient  unlimited  mon 
archies.  He  was  needed  to  impart  occasional  re 
lief  from  the  surfeit  that  came  from  the  constant 
servilities  of  the  rest  of  mankind,  and  give  tempo 
rary  relaxation  from  the  cares  and  the  sense  of  un 
questioned,  secure  domination.  A  despotic  king, 
if  only  from  caprice,  must  have  sometimes  a  mim 
icry  of  the  feeling  of  independence  in  a  subject,  yet, 
tolerating  no  earnest  sort,  he  must  adopt  a  fool  and 
put  upon  him  the  cap  and  bells.  Whenever  such  a 
king  abdicates  his  crown,  it  is  most  natural  for  him 
to  retain  this  appendage,  which,  of  all,  had  least  to  do 
with  the  cares  that  made  him  weary.  With  what 
art  the  poet  leads  to  the  changes  in  the  relations  of 
these  two!  As  the  King  declines,  the  Foo1  is  ex 
alted.  A  sort  of  wisdom,  paroxysmal  though  it  be, 
comes  to  the  fool  in  the  midst  of  this  sudden,  vast 
degradation.  How  do  the  jestings  grow  into  pet 
ulant  complainings,  into  semi-serious  remenstra- 
tion,  into  serious  rebuking,  into  apt  quoting  of  old 


SHAKESPEARE  S    TRAGIC    LOVERS.  24! 

wise  saws,  until  he  becomes  silent,  and,  like  a  dog, 
faithful  to  the  last,  is  willing  to  die,  and  dies  tor 
his  master.  We  could  not  have  foreseen  these 
changes.  But  when  we  saw,  we  recognized  them 
as  true  to  that  strange  companionship,  and  yet  once 
again  wonder  at  the  universality  of  the  genius 
which  so  well  understood,  and  so  faithfully  por 
trayed  these  extremes  in  human  conditions. 

Sad  histories  these  of  human  loves.  From  no  pe 
riod  in  man's  life,  youth,  middle  age,  or  old  the  un 
relenting  Queen  will  lift  her  malediction, 

"They  that  love  best,  their  loves  shall  not  enjoy." 


btudies, 
and  socia 

literary 

J73 
ser.l 

X"~~ 

^ 

UNIVERSITY  <?F  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


